The 'Poet Laureate' of West Sussex
Hilaire Belloc was born on 27th July 1870, just outside Paris, of an English mother and French father. At the age of six, following the death of his father, he was brought to England - at first living in his mother's house in London with his sister Marie.
Two years later the family moved to Slindon in the Sussex countryside ...and here bagan Belloc's love of the woods and downs - which was to stay with him for the rest of his life.
He was awarded a 'first' in Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford and in 1896 married his American wife Elodie in California. They moved back to England some nine years later and bought King's Land at Shipley in West Sussex. It was a rambling house with 5 acres of land and a windmill. He lived there until his death in 1953, and was buried in the graveyard of the nearby catholic church at West Grinstead.
He fascinated our great hero - the late Bob Copper - who wrote of him :-
"In Belloc we find the sagacity of the philosopher, the exuberance of the sailor and the tenderness of the poet, all encompassed in one rather bulky lump of clay. It amounted to something exceedingly close to genius"
Belloc is perhaps best known and loved in the walking fraternity for his poetry and songs and, of course, for the story of his walk across the breadth of Sussex, published in 1912 as 'The Four Men'
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