Alright Team,

It’s been a while; I’ve had big life things and I’ve been writing a show with Mark Thomas. It is such a stunning story I can’t wait to share it with you all. Big plans for 2025. More about that in the coming months. The above photo is one that Mark took of me dressed as a Digger at Wigan Diggers Festival. We had just eaten a Baby’s head, pea wet and chips, which translates as pie, pea juice and chips.

One of my favourite things about writing this newsletter is sharing my latest niche discoveries and adventures. Today, I want to tell you about a hill that looks like an ordinary hill but it’s not! It’s full of layers of amazing cultural, ecological, and historical significances and stories, so many stories!

It’s in East Brighton, there’s a place called Whitehawk, home to a hill that has been deliberately excluded from the South Downs National Park.

Its soil is rare chalk grassland—one of the UK’s most endangered habitats, that’s only found in a few places in the World. Chalk grasslands are among the most biodiverse ecosystems in Europe, home to rare species of things like orchids and the Adonis blue butterfly.

I’ve even spotted an entire family of slow worms there—something I’ve never seen before. And it’s not just nature that makes this hill special. Whitehawk Hill is the site of one of Britain’s earliest Neolithic monuments, a causewayed enclosure dating back around 5,500 years. Older than Stone Henge. This ancient structure, made up of circular ditches and banks, was once a site for feasting, burials, and other rituals. Archaeologists unearthed the burial of a 25-year-old woman, dubbed “The Whitehawk Woman” here.

In the 1990s, a group of local residents and a bloke called Dave Bangs formed “The Friends of Whitehawk Hill” (FOWH) to protect the site, as developers had already destroyed something like 30% of the Neolithic enclosure. Imagine if anyone tried to develop on even 1% of Stone Henge. They’ve fought off attempts to develop the hill three times, once thanks to a beetle, a new species of beetle that they discovered that is ONLY found in Whitehawk! They called it “The Whitehawk Soldier Beetle,” But their fight continues—not just against developers, but also against invasive plant species like bramble, which kills things like the plant that the Blue Adonis Butterfly eats.

I joined the FOWH in a volunteer session to help manage the habitat. There were only three of us. By contrast, posher places in Brighton have so many volunteers for its nature projects that they’ve had to introduce timesheets! As the naturalist Dave Bangs (not a naturist, as I once accidentally called him!) pointed out, if Whitehawk Hill were anywhere else, it would have full protection, national park status, a dedicated team managing the habitat, and probably a café serving cream teas. But because it’s on a council estate, it’s neglected and overlooked.

It’s a scandal, and it’s blatantly a matter of class. This is a site that was once so important that the Neolithic’s, the first farmers sought it out.

I was lucky enough to visit Dave Bangs’s flat —it’s like a mausoleum of natural objects that looked to me like rocks and weeds but he brings them all to life with his stories and insights. He’s a lovely man whose written books with a passion for fighting for the voiceless and the under dogs. He wears a housecoat to keep warm and he’s a force to be reckoned with and whenever he would get angry about something unjust, he would get up from his chair and march to and from the kitchen shouting getting the belt of his housecoat tangled in the door handle. I love that my research takes me to these places, to ancient hills and the wild living rooms of enthusiasts.

I read a book recently that I really recommend and in it was this quote, that I love “Hope can exist in the margins, in the quiet moments and in the seemingly insignificant acts of defiance against despair” Beautiful! The book was “The Perfect Golden Circle – Benjamin Myers” 

If you’d like to volunteer with FOWH get involved here

Other Things and Recommendations 

Here’s an artist talk that I really enjoyed calling for greater solidarity within the arts that I did for the House Network at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

I’ve been traveling around a bit and not getting out to see live shows as much. So, to keep my toe dipped in culture, I subscribed to the National Theatre at Home. Stand out shows for me were Grenfell – in the words of survivors and People Places and Things. A tenner a month but much cheaper than live.

More books I’ve been loving

Wise Women – Sharon Blackie

Wild Service – Why Nature Needs You

“In May 2022, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences released a paper that measured fourteen European countries on three factors: biodiversity, wellbeing, and nature connectedness. Britain came last in every single category. The findings are clear. We are suffering, and nature is too.”


Films and Podcasts

Film – The Outrun
Podcast – The Good Whale

Thanks for reading

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Love Vic x