Walk in the footsteps of one of world’s greatest archaeologists in South Downs National Park
July 20, 2023
He’s often considered the founding father of modern archaeology and his collection of 50,000 artefacts continues to reveal fascinating details about past lives and cultures.
Now people can find out more about Augustus Pitt Rivers and his work by enjoying a new immersive walking experience in the South Downs National Park.
The audio trail, based at Seven Sisters Country Park, walks in the footsteps of Pitt Rivers, who spent time in the South Downs during the 1860s and 1870s. He was fascinated by the many hillforts between Chichester and Beachy Head and spent time excavating sites at The Trundle, Highdown, Cissbury Ring, Devil’s Dyke and Seaford Head among many others, notably discovering and recording Bronze Age burial mounds, prehistoric tools and Roman pottery hidden for millennia in the chalk landscape. Pitt Rivers even raced to Seaford Head to excavate the Iron Age fort there after hearing a rumour the site was to be blown up to create sea defences.
Some of the artefacts Pitt Rivers collected from the South Downs are now part of the collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
Meanwhile, over on the western side of the National Park, another “In Their Footsteps” audio tour is also being launched this month, revealing the life and times of artist Flora Twort. Moving to Petersfield at the end of the First World War, Twort was an accomplished artist and moved in circles that included well-known painters such as Stanley Spencer. She retained a deep passion for Petersfield throughout her life and left a collection of nearly 1,000 paintings and sketches, beautifully portraying the people, culture and landscape of the historic market town. Many of her works were displayed in The Royal Academy, and today her collection is proudly on display at Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery.
The free tours are downloadable as an app on mobile phones and connect landscape and focal points to the stories of the Pitt Rivers and Twort.
The East Sussex walk, in the footsteps of Pitt Rivers, comprises a 6.5km/4-mile circular route exploring the sweeping parkland and iconic coastline at Seven Sisters Country Park. The Hampshire tour, exploring the work of Flora Twort, starts and finishes at Petersfield Museum and comprises a 1.5-mile circular route, including an optional extended walk around the picturesque Petersfield Heath.
The two new tours are the latest in the “In Their Footsteps” series, with guided walks already in place for other key figures in the National Park’s heritage, including Virginia Woolf and the world-renowned Bloomsbury Group, the great naturalist Gilbert White and artist Ivon Hitchens.
Anooshka Rawden, Cultural Heritage Lead for the National Park, said: “These brand new tours give people the chance to walk in the footsteps of eminent thinkers and artists who were inspired by the landscape and nature of the South Downs.
“Pitt Rivers had a huge impact on the emerging discipline of archaeology. In the South Downs, his meticulous records of sites such as Cissbury, Highdown and Seaford Head set the foundations for archaeological discoveries in Sussex by subsequent generations of archaeologists. Flora Twort was a talented artist who really captured 20th century life in Petersfield through the decades, particularly the poignant changes in the town’s streetscape, and seeing her work is as much a history lesson as it is an appreciation of her amazing creativity.
“I hope people enjoy these guided tours.”
People can download the app from their phone’s app store, either by searching “In Their Footsteps” or following the below links:
Google Play store: http://bit.ly/InTheirFootstepsGoogle
Apple store: http://bit.ly/InTheirFootstepsApp
The development of the tours was funded by the South Downs National Park Trust, the official independent charity for the National Park.
Pictures: Augustus Pitt Rivers (public domain); Flora Twort’s Market Day at Petersfield Market Square 1939, Watercolour on paper, The Flora Twort Collection. © Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery; Seven Sisters Country Park (by Daniel Greenwood)
About Pitt Rivers
Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers (1827-1900) was a soldier and collector, interested in anthropology and archaeology.
Pitt-Rivers set himself an enormous task which he spent most of his life trying to achieve. Through the acquisition of comprehensive collections from the early 1850s onwards, he wished to make clear the human development of technologies and material culture. He used the objects in his collections as tools in his study of archaeology and anthropology.
The full extent of Pitt-Rivers’ collections has never been known but it is now clear that during his lifetime he probably owned in excess of 50,000 separate artefacts. The first half of these collections was donated to the University of Oxford in 1884 and founded the Pitt Rivers Museum. He then acquired a second, separate, collection after 1880 (similar in size and content to his first), which he displayed at his private museum in Farnham, Dorset. This museum was eventually closed in the 1960s and the second collection has now been sold and dispersed throughout the world.
For more information on his excavations in Sussex, visit Pitt Rivers and Sussex (ox.ac.uk)
(Source University of Oxford)
About Flora Twort
Flora Twort (1893-1985) was a keen observer of contemporary life and she drew inspiration from her surroundings and everyday activities.. She studied at the London School of Art, the London Polytechnic and the Slade School of Art.
Twort regularly showed at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the New English Art Club. In 1934, she joined the Society of Women Artists, whose then President was the acclaimed artist Laura Knight.
She moved to Petersfield at the end of the First World War and opened a bookshop at 1 and 2 The Square, which she ran with Hester Wagstaff and Maria Brahms. She used the top floor of the bookshop as her studio and painted many scenes of the life of the town and its residents. In 1948 Flora moved into her new studio in Church Path, where she continued her work, mainly portraits and watercolours. Eventually, she retired at the age of 81.
Flora Twort had a passion for the town and the local landscape. Her paintings of market scenes in the Square and the Petersfield Heath with the Taro Fair bring old Petersfield to life. She worked in watercolour and oil and painted many portraits in pastels, chalk and charcoal.
Flora contributed regularly to the Petersfield Arts and Crafts Society, of which she was a founding member, and at the Petersfield Sketch Club, which she formed in 1941.
The Flora Twort Collection includes nearly 1,000 works, from sketchbooks and printing blocks to finished paintings and has a permanent home at Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery.
(Source Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery)