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2. Howkins, A., Reshaping Rural England: A Social History 1850–1925 (London, 1991) p. 224.Google Scholar This article has benefited from Alun Howkins' work on the remaking of rural England and seeks to suggest a similar, if delayed, process regarding the military function of landownership.

3. French, D. ‘The Rise and Fall of “Business as usual”’ in Burk, K. (ed.) War and the State. The Transformation of British Government, 1914–1919 (London, 1982), pp. 20–27.Google Scholar

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5. Sussex Daily Netvs, 21st 09 1914.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., 21st September 1914. For a discussion of the socio-economic significance of the Leconfield estate see Hugh Whitcomb's unpublished account Family Notes and War Memoirs (1979)Google Scholar West Sussex Record Office (WSRO) MP2413. As a Petworth boy he joined the 13th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment (RSR) in December 1914, aged 16¾ years.

7. Sussex Daily News, 17th 02 1915.Google Scholar The death of Capt. the Hon. W.R. Wyndham was reported in the Sussex Daily News on 4th 02, 1915.Google Scholar

8. Sussex Daily News, 19th 09 and 12th 11 1914.Google Scholar Similarly Viscount Gage ‘set an example’ to the ‘close’ village of West Firle by joining the Royal Sussex Regiment.

9. Sussex Daily News, 2nd 09 1914.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., 3rd September 1914.

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14. The military membership of the Sussex Territorial Forces Association comprised Col. Earl Brassey (Normanhurst, Battle); Col. W.H. Campion, 4th Volunteer Battalion (Danny Park, Hurstpierpoint); Lt. Col. F.G Langham, 5th Volunteer Battalion, a solicitor in Battle; Col. Lord Leconfield (Petworth House); Col. the Duke of Norfolk (Arundel Castle); Col R.M. Rawson, Sussex Yeomanry (Gravenhurst, Bolney); Lt. Col. C.B. Godman (Woldingfold, Cowfold); Earl of Chichester (Stanmer Park); G.W. Loder (Wakehurst Place, Ardingly); Maj. Hon. H.B. Portman (Buxted Park, Uckfield) and Capt. Earl Winterton M.P. (Shillinglee Park, near Petworth) Kelly's Directory of Sussex 1915.

15. Seethe letter of Maj.-Gen J. Adye, Eastern Command to High Sheriff of Kent, 21st August 1914, quoted in Osborne, J.M., The Voluntary Recruiting Movement in Britain 1914–1916 (New York, 1982), p. 12.Google Scholar

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17. Lt.-Col. Powell-Edwards, H.I., The Sussex Yeomanry and 16th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment 1914–1919 (A. Melrose, London, n.d.), p. 18.Google Scholar Lady March and wives of the yeomanry officers organised parcels to the regiment, 1914–15, p. 21.

18. St Paul's Church Parish Magazine, Worthing. 08 1915.Google Scholar

19. Sussex Daily News, 25th and 29th 09 1914.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., 3rd September 1914.

21. Rutter, O.The History of the Seventh (Service) Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment 1914–1919 (Times Publishing Co., London, 1934), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

22. Howkins, A., Reshaping Rural England, p. 248.Google Scholar

23. Brandon, P. and Short, B., The South East from A.D. 1000 (London, 1990), pp. 317–8.Google Scholar

24. News of a Petworth man at the front drew particular attention to ‘his father last year having celebrated his jubilee of work on the estate of Lord Leconfield’. Sussex Daily News, 24th 09 1914.Google Scholar

25. Gifts provided by the Duke of Norfolk at Arundel at the end of the 4th Battalion's recruiting march, West Sussex County Times, 14th 11 1914.Google Scholar

26. Broadly stated, Sussex resorts included a residential rentier class of metropolitan origin and numerous small scale ‘service’ enterprises. Brighton regained its status as a fashionable resort in the late Edwardian era. Eastbourne's pattern of growth reflected the Duke of Devonshire's aspirations in planning a middle class resort, but by 1901 patronage and economic control had largely passed to the municipal authority. Waller, P.J., Town, City and Nation 1850–1914 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 138, 143–4.Google Scholar

27. Census of England and Wales, 1911Google Scholar, Cd. 5705, County of Sussex, information from tables 5, 24 and 30. On the myth of ‘village England’ see Sillars, S., Art and Survival in First World War Britain (New York, 1987), pp. 138–9.Google Scholar

28. Belloc, H., The County of Sussex (London, 1936) p. 149.Google Scholar This text was an almost verbatim copy of an anonymous illustrated volume on Sussex in 1906 (and 1913). See also Waller, P.J.Town City and Nation p. 143.Google Scholar

29. Compiled from data in the Sussex Daily News, 10th 10 1914Google Scholar and Census of England and Wales, 1911Google Scholar, Cd. 5705, County of Sussex, Table 5.

30. See, for example, W. Long.to Col. Repington, 1st January 1915, British Library, Add. Ms. 62419.

31. Sussex Daily News, 11th 02 1915.Google Scholar

32. Compare with the action of G.L. Courthope of Fair View, Hawkhurst, M.P. for Rye, who on rejoining the 5th (Cinque Port) Battalion took 15 of his estate workers with him. Horn, P., Rural Life in England in the First World War (Dublin, 1984) p. 28.Google Scholar

33. The Eastbourne Gazette, 14th 10 1914Google Scholar, quoted in Gibson, J.M. and Green, R.L. (eds.), The Unknoivn Conan Doyle. Letters to the Press (London, 1986) pp. 210–11.Google Scholar

34. Sussex Daily News, 9th 09 1914.Google Scholar

35. Conan Doyle wrote of the Imperial Yeomanry of 1900 ‘Noblemen and grooms rode knee to knee in the ranks, and the officers included many well known country gentlemen and masters of hounds’. Doyle, A. Conan, The Great Boer War (London, 1903), p. 155.Google Scholar Earl Winterton, Lord Cowdray of Midhurst and Sir Weetman Pearson of Paddockhurst, Worth joined contingents of the Imperial Yeomanry. However, the rural composition of the Imperial Yeomanry during the Boer War should not be overestimated. See Price, R.An Imperial War and the British Working Class (London, 1972) ch. 5. passim.Google Scholar

36. Beckett, I., ‘The Territorial Force’Google Scholar in Beckett, I.F.W. and Simpson, K., A Nation in Arms, p. 131.Google Scholar

37. Magnus, P., Kitchener: Portrait of an Imperialist (Harmondsworth, 1968 ed.), p. 346.Google Scholar

38. Simkins, P., Kitchener's Army: The Raising of the New Armies 1914–16 (Manchester, 1988), p. 84.Google Scholar See also Hughes, C., ‘The New Armies’Google Scholar in Beckett, I.F.W. and Simpson, K., A Nation in Arms, p. 106.Google Scholar

39. The only mention of Lowther's recruiting work in the literature on the New Armies is in Cassar, G.H., Kitchener: Architect of Victory (London, 1977), p. 205.Google Scholar

40. The Times, 3rd 09 1914.Google Scholar

41. East Sussex Record Office (ESRO) Chichester mss, CHR/19/6/13 Frederick Jones, Land Agent to Lord Chichester, 20th January 1907; Statement of account, year ending 31st December 1906 and Report on Sussex estates, F.G. Burroughs, 22nd April 1907; CHR/19/5/12 Ian Whitbread to Lord Chichester 4th July 1907; CHR/19/5/29 F.G. Burroughs, Visiting Agent, to Lord Chichester, 20th May 1914.

42. ESRO Chichester mss. 21/4 Sale particulars, Herstmonceux Castle Estate 1910, p. 1.

43. Hare, A.J.Sussex (London, 1894), p. 75.Google Scholar

44. ESRO Chichester mss. 21/4, Sale particulars, Herstmonceux Castle Estate, 1910, p. 1.

45. Channah, I., The Sussex Coast (London, 1912), p. 318.Google Scholar

46. Memorial tablet, All Saint's Church, Herstmonceux. See also the Sale catalogue of The Valuable Contents of Hurstmonceux Castle, 5–6 November 1929, British Library, S.C. Christie.

47. The Times, 18th 06 1929Google Scholar; Martineau, G.D., A History of the Royal Sussex Regiment (Moore and Tillyer, Chichester, n.d.), p. 183.Google Scholar

48. For example, the planting of Leonardslee, Lower Beeding by Sir Edmund Loder Bt. in 1887 and Borde Hill Gardens near Haywards Heath by Col. Stephenson Clarke from 1893. In 1910 Herstmonceux Castle was recommended as a site ‘for the establishment of Old-World Pleasure Grounds of the Most Perfect Description’. It remains today one of the missing picturesque pleasure grounds of Sussex.

49. Hare, A.J., Sussex, p. 75.Google Scholar

50. Howkins, A., Reshaping Rural England, p. 55.Google Scholar

51. 113 H.C. Deb. 5s, Col. 1716, 17th March 1919.

52. Lowther received many guests at Herstmonceux Castle including Winston Churchill in mid-August 1916, during his period of painful disengagement from political involvement in the war. He wrote, ‘I can hear the guns here quite plainly thudding away’, Gilbert, M., Winston Churchill Vol. 3 1914–1916 (London, 1971), p. 799.Google Scholar See also Carter, V. Bonham, Winston Churchill as I Kneio him (London, 1965), pp. 462–466.Google Scholar She provided much evidence of the way the castle's restoration captured Lowther's imagination.

53. 82 H. C. Deb. 5s, Col. 184, 4th May 1916; The Times, 5th 05 1916.Google Scholar

54. The Times, 27th 08 1914.Google Scholar William Wood noted that shepherds received 15s. per week (and rarely paid for their cottage), Wood, W., A Sussex Farmer (London, 1938) p. 66.Google Scholar See also Horn, P., Rural Life in England in the First World War, p. 8.Google Scholar

55. Sussex Daily News, 3rd 09 1914.Google Scholar

56. Ibid., 9th September 1914.

57. See Wood, W., A Sussex Farmer, p. 63.Google Scholar

58. See Wood, F.F., Round About Sussex Downs (London, 1925)Google Scholar and, particularly, Becket, A., The Spirit of the Downs (London, 3rd ed. 1923).Google Scholar He became founder President of the Society of Sussex Downsmen in the same year. For a visual renditon of the rural idyll in semisentimentalised form see Robert Gallon's (1845–1925) ‘On the way to Church, the South Downs’ in Wood, C., Paradise Lost: Paintings of English Country Life and Landscape 1850–1914 (Vermont, 1988), plate 1.Google Scholar

59. Whitechurch, V., Download Echoes (London, 1924), p. 221.Google Scholar

60. On the diminishing wartime significance of Southdown flocks see Porter, V., The Southdown Sheep (Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, Singleton, 1991), p. 36.Google Scholar

61. WSRO RSR MS 11/60 Sussex Marching Song ‘Lowther's Own’, words by A.W. Busbridge and music by James Dear, n.d. It was played at a patriotic smoking concert at Lambs Hotel, Eastbourne on 11th November, 1914.

62. These figures were calculated from entries for Sussex born men in 11th Battalion, (1st Southdown) in the publication, Soldiers Died in the Great War: Part 40 The Royal Sussex Regiment (HMSO, London, 1921), pp. 46–52.Google Scholar

63. On smaller land holdings voluntary enlistment was constrained by harvest time and the financial implications of the loss of family farm workers. The initial loss of men from the land has been exaggerated, as shown by Dewey, P.E., ‘Agricultural Labour Supply in England and Wales during the First World War’, Economic History Review, 18, 1975, 103.Google Scholar

64. Sussex gentlemen were able to enlist in the 1st Sportsman's Battalion (later 23rd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers) ‘for one day only’ at the Royal Albion Hotel, Brighton on 1st October 1914. Thirty-five gentlemen enlisted.

65. Sussex Doily News, 9th 09 1914.Google Scholar In January 1918 Lowther expressed admiration of ‘old athletes, ex-cricketers, football players, policemen and blacksmiths’ who, he said, were ready to enlist in a veteran's army to ‘stiffen’ the conscript soldier on the Western Front. 101 H.C. Deb. 5s Col. 1242, 24th January 1918. See Simkins, P., Kitchener's Army, p. 92.Google Scholar

66. Veitch, C. ‘Play up! Play up! and Win the War. Football, the Nation and the First World War 1914–15’, Journal of Contemporary History 20; 3, 1985, 363–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67. WSRO Oral history tape (OH25) R. Whitley.

68. Sussex Daily News, 12th 11 1914.Google Scholar

69. Lytton, N., The Press and the General Staff (London, 1921), p. 7.Google Scholar

70. Suggestive of its separate identity was the carefully compiled Roll of Honour in the West Tarring and Salvington Parish Magazine. In December 1914 one parishioner enlisted in ‘Lowther's Regiment’.

71. Sussex Daily News, 15th 09 1914.Google Scholar Like other raisers Lowther was better placed than the War Office to make local arrangements to overcome the inadequate hutting programme. Billetting in Bexhill-on-Sea reduced the time his ‘lambs’ spent under canvas in bleak winter conditions.

72. WSRO RSR MS 7/85 Reminiscence of Mr. J. Pannett, born in Eastbourne, in the Bexhillon-Sea Observer, 12th 09 1964.Google Scholar

73. WSRO MP 1335. Recruiting poster for the Southdown Battalions (copy) undated.

74. French, D., British Economic and Strategic Planning 1905–15 (London, 1982) p. 124.Google Scholar

75. WSRO MP 2426, Brig.-Gen. O'Brien to the Duke of Norfolk, 31st March 1915.

76. WSRO RSR MS7/23 Official War Diary of the 11 th Battalion, RSR. Blunden's arrival is noted on 14th May 1916.

77. Blunden, E., Undertones of War (Harmondsworth (1928) 1982 ed.), p. 38.Google Scholar In the preface to his second edition Blunden noted ‘uncertainties of time and situation’ in his prose memoir, but his chronology bears a close resemblance to the battalion's Official War Diary. The haunting shadow of war and Blunden's inability to say ‘Goodbye to all that’ is well documented, for example O'Prey, P. (ed.), In Broken Images: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1914–46 (London, 1982), p. 173Google Scholar; Webb, B., Edmund Blunden: A Biography (New Haven, 1990), p. 210.Google Scholar The strength of his attachment to the ‘Southdowns’ as ‘a remarkably united trio of battalions’ was clearly apparent in his memorial of 1954, reprinted in the programme of the 40th anniversary celebrations of the Southdown Battalions Association, Worthing, 19th September 1954. WSRO RSR MS 11/73.

78. Priestley, J.B., English Journey (Harmondsworth, (1934), 1977 ed.) p. 159.Google Scholar

79. Blunden's literary pastoralism, which afforded him ‘Arcadian’ moments, stemmed from his formative poetic influences, not from any residual rural distinctiveness apparent in the battalion. See Fussell, P., The Great War and Modern Memory (London, 1975), p. 263.Google Scholar Apart from his self-image of the ‘harmless young shepherd in a soldier's coat’ (p. 242), references to men ‘from many an English farm’ (Battalion in rest) and the exhortation to Sergeant Hoad to live – ‘Think of Eastbourne and your dad’ (Pillbox) were examples of poetic lines which reflected service with a Southdown battalion, Undertones of War p. 255 and p. 260.Google Scholar

80. Ibid., p. 39.

81. Lytton, N., The English Country Gentleman (London, 1924), p. 184.Google Scholar

82. Ibid., p. 185. Dakers, C., The Countryside at War 1914–18 (London, 1987), pp. 25–6.Google Scholar

83. West Sussex County Times, 14th 11 1914.Google Scholar Lytton canvassed the tenantry of his father-in-law Wilfred Scawen Blunt, Arabist, anti-imperialist and inhabitant-enthusiast of Sussex, who regarded the battalion ‘as a replica of Falstaff's volunteers’ and noted, ‘I advised them all to surrender on the earliest occasion’, quoted in Longford, E., A Pilgrimage of Passion: The Life of Wilfred Scawen Blunt (London, 1979), p. 401.Google Scholar

84. Lytton, N., The English Country Gentleman, p. 187.Google Scholar Apart from Lytton the social origins of battalion officers lay in the professions, not the rural gentry.

85. WSRO RSR MS. 7/23 Official War Diary, 11th Battalion, RSR, 24th June 1916; Lytton, N., The Press and the General Staff, p. 39.Google Scholar In 116 Brigade Lytton noted that the battalion commanders were treated like company commanders, which was illustrative of the gulf between senior ranking regular officers and the units of the New Armies.

86. West Sussex Gazette, 17th 11 1921Google Scholar; A Short History of the Royal Sussex Regiment (Aldershot, 1927), p. 80.Google ScholarWho's Who in Sussex (Worcester, 1935)Google Scholar provided no trace of former Southdown battalion officers resident in the county, which is unsurprising since, for example, Capt. II. Rose, Vicar of Ditchling, was the sole survivor of the original complement of officers of the 13th Battalion.

87. Williams, B., Raising and Training the New Armies (London, 1918) p. 74Google Scholar; James, E.A., British Regiments 1914–18 (London, 1978), p. 78.Google Scholar

88. Blunden, E., Undertones of War, p. 95.Google Scholar

89. WSRO MP2413 H. Whitcomb. John Bourne has drawn attention to the plight and tragedies of the locally raised battalions of December 1914, which was certainly reflected in the short coherent existence of the Southdown ‘pals’. Bourne, J., Britain and the Great War 1914–1918 (London, 1989) pp. 160–1.Google Scholarnoted, John Keegan, ‘The promise of tragedy which loomed about these bands of uniformed innocents was further heightened by reason of their narrowly territorial recruitment’, The Face of Battle (Harmondsworth, 1978 ed.) p. 226.Google Scholar ‘The original ethos of the Southdown battalions was substantially lost within six months of their arrival in France’

90. WSRO RSR MS7/23 Official War Diary, 11th Battalion, RSR, 3rd September 1916.

91. Lytton, N., The English Country Gentlemen, p. 193.Google Scholar See also his The Press and the General Staff, p. 52.Google Scholar

92. WSRO RSR MS7/23 Official War Diary, 11th Battalion, RSR. The drafts arrived on 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th September 1916.

93. Imperial War Museum (IWM), Bickerton, T.A., The Wartime Experiences of an Ordinary “Tommy”, unpublished typescript, 1964, p. 7.Google Scholar See also IWM 87/33/1 C.P. Harris, manuscript diaries from his departure from Watford, 15th December 1916.

94. During 1916 the base ‘wastage’ level on the Western Front was 75,000 casualties per month. Grieves, K.The Politics of Manpower 1914–18 (Manchester, 1988), p. 34.Google Scholar

95. Blunden, E., Undertones of War, p. 45.Google Scholar

96. These conclusions are based on information on the 11th Battalion, RSR from the publication Soldiers Died in the Great War, pp. 46–52.Google Scholar

97. WSRO RSR MS7/23 Official War Diary, 11th Battalion, RSR. An insight into battalion HQs' perception of ‘wastage’ levels was provided on 22nd October 1917, ‘our casualties were not unduly heavy – other ranks, killed 25, wounded 71, missing 30’.

98. Grieves, K., The Politics of Manpower, p. 213.Google Scholar

99. Blunden, E., Undertones of War, p. 220.Google Scholar For a summary see Blunden, E., ‘An Infantryman Passes By’, in Panichas, G.A., Promises of Greatness: The War of 1914–1918 (London, 1968), pp. 34–5.Google Scholar

100. WSRO RSR MS7/23 Official War Diary, 11th Battalion, RSR, 31st October 1916.

101. Ibid., 17th December 1917. In 1930 The Rousillon Gazette recorded that on 29th March, 313 of 533 survivors of all Southdown battalions mustered at Brighton. Vol. 18/1, May 1930.

102. Short History of the Royal Sussex Regiment, p. 76Google Scholar; James, E.A.British Regiments, p. 78.Google Scholar

103. Lt. Col. W. Colsey Millward (1886–1956), chairman of Pevensey Parish Council, Sussex County Book (London, 1938).Google Scholar

104. Andrzejiwski, S., Military Organisation and Society (London, 1954).Google Scholar

105. G. Dallas and D. Gill provide a reminder of the essential starting point, namely the mutual antagonism between the urban worker and military service in the pre-war era. The Unknown Army: Mutinies in the British Army in World War I (London, 1985) pp. 17–21.Google Scholar The War Office recognised that ‘enlistment into a localised unit, or one connected with a particular interest, appeals to a large number of men who do not take advantage of the ordinary method of joining the Service’. Reginald Brade, Secretary, War Office to Lords Lieutenant of Counties, 26th March 1915, WSRO MP 2426.