The Ridge
The road back from Lewes along the mid-Weald to West Kent runs along the top of a ridge which gives some of the finest views in the south of England. It passes through Heathfield, Burwash and Etchingham, coming over the frontier of the county at the approach to Lamberhurst. Burwash, with its iron-master's house and its Flemish weaver's house standing side by side, perfect examples of sixteenth-century English domestic architecture, is the village made famous by Kipling, whose house, Batemans, is now in the hands of the National Trust, and may be explored along with the 'well-kept garden where Kipling's old gardener still works. This house, of Kentish stone, is another reminder of the affluence which cloth-making brought to the south of England before the age of machinery.
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