"So, you've seen them too!"

That the current – and 18th - Duke of Norfolk can stand upon the dimpled summit of Harrow Hill and say that, dependent on the weather, he owns everything as far as his eyes could see, says much about this particular place. This spot in West Sussex has always been a desirable location: temperate, fertile, and in places defendable. The Duke’s good fortune to own it is a legacy of an ancient act of feudal patronage; shortly after the Norman conquest of England, King William gifted this area - from the Downs to the sea - to his trusted general Roger de Montgomerie, and it eventually passed via marriage from the Earls of Arundel to the Dukes of Norfolk.

Long before that gift was made, and well before the founding of the 83 confiscated Saxon manors which comprised it, Harrow Hill already had a social and economic significance since the Neolithic era. Harrow Hill was once a significant part of a thriving network of Sussex flint mines, investigation of which has revealed at least 245 known workings that pock the summit of the hill. Some of the mines are extensive galleried pits which follow flint seams, and dating of artefacts found within them indicates a period of active mining from c. 4,000 to 2,200 BC. A later Bronze Age hill fort also occupies the western side of the summit, and there is sufficient evidence to suggest continued use of the hill for both domestic and ritual purposes through the Roman and Saxon eras.

Longevity of use, and occupation by successive cultures, has endowed Harrow Hill with a certain numinous quality. Animal remains excavated at the hill top enclosure point to the possibility of ritual sacrifice rather than cattle rearing, and the name ‘Harrow’ is likely derived from the Saxon word ‘Hearg’, meaning ‘Heathen hilltop temple’. Myth and folklore seem to emerge readily from this cultural palimpsest, and the hilltop forts of Sussex such as Harrow, Cissbury and Chanctonbury have been identified by folklorists as places haunted by dancing fairies at midnight on Midsummer Eve. Harrow Hill has a particularly poignant part in this story as, according to an older woman who lived at nearby Lee Farm, the fairies who occupied the hill left in disgust, never to return, in protest at an archaeological dig in the 1920s.

Or did they?

Ian Lace writes that John Ireland, the composer who lived at nearby Washington in the 1950s and early 1960s, often walked in the Downs, open and sensitive to the inspirational power of the landscape. This once led to an encounter, as related by Ireland’s companion Norah Kirby:

‘On one occasion John Ireland arose early, cut some sandwiches and chose Harrow Hill as the place for his picnic. Just as he was about to start eating, he noticed some children dancing around him in archaic clothing - very quiet, very silent. He was a little put out about having his peace invaded by children; he looked away for a moment, when he looked back they had disappeared.

The incident made such an impression on him that he wrote about his experience to Arnold Machen whose books had greatly influenced much of his music. The reply he received was a postcard with the laconic message “So, you’ve seen them too!” ‘