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Hut!

Behold, the most famous hut in Sussex. It’s a little black hut with a red corrugated iron roof and it’s an absolute favorite of artists, photographers, journalists and other assorted blackguards. You find it on cards and postcards all over. I have no idea why.

It was indeed in the mid-80s today, so Uncle B decided we should go for a long walk. That thing about mad dogs and Englishmen? True.

We went to the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. We haven’t been since before the lockdown. It’s kind of a trek for us, but it’s a long walk by the sea (with a famous hut on it). It’s always cooler by the water.

Here it is in color. If you look way down the path, you can make out not one but two WWII era cement pillboxes built to fend off Mr Hitler. One on either side. The Brits always assumed the Germans would land here first and, after the war when they uncovered the documents, that was indeed the plan.

Always Sussex.

Comments


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: July 13, 2022, 9:33 pm

Stoaty, I see one of those information signs by that hut. Can you tell us what it says? I wouldn’t be too surprised if after today it says,

Behold, the most famous hut in Sussex. This otherwise unremarkable hut is an absolute favorite of artists, photographers, journalists and other assorted blackguards. You’ll find it on cards and postcards all over. We have no idea why.


Comment from Durnedyankee
Time: July 13, 2022, 10:45 pm

So England has a Motif #1 eh?

https://rockportusa.com/arts/motif-no-1/

Local rumor had it Kodak had exact structural plans for it,used to exactly rebuild it after the Nor’easter in ’78 destroyed it.

Oh and it’s best viewed from Bearskin Neck, where there used to be a Fort that didn’t protect Rockport from the depredations of His Majesty King George the third’s Royal Marines when they came for a visit.

So if you’ve seen the little red shed since that storm, you’re looking at a recreation.


Comment from OldFert
Time: July 14, 2022, 12:27 am

If the walls were silvery-colored metal, its proximity to the pillboxes could make it, militarily, a Tin Hut.

(I’ll see myself out.)


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: July 14, 2022, 3:48 am

@OldFert is A tEase!


Comment from Drew458
Time: July 14, 2022, 12:33 pm

A lone hut on the empty scrabble, its red roof the only bit of color in a nearly barren landscape. I can see the visual appeal, in a kind of Ozymandias way. We have our Red Mill here in quaint little Clinton, probably one of the most painted and photographed sites in the country.


Comment from Drew458
Time: July 14, 2022, 12:38 pm

Thanks Durned. That was my first thought too, but I couldn’t remember the name. I’ve actually been there, and knew nothing of art at the time, but I thought then that it was so picturesque that somebody ought to paint it.


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: July 14, 2022, 2:24 pm

Little Black Hut. I wonder who maintains it. But I can see why it would be a popular focal point for photographs or painting.

@Drew458—My Second Father painted that Red Mill. It was a monthly picture on a calendar one year, and he liked it so much he decided to paint it.


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: July 14, 2022, 3:05 pm

@Drew
Masswahtuchetts has a couple old mills like that, not as big if I recall rightly, that one you linked to in Clinton is a doozy!

Here’s one in Sudbury Mass – not nearly as grand as the one in Clinton.
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/massachusetts/picnic-mill-ma/

The appeal here is it’s the grist mill for the Wayside Inn, made famous by Longfellow in his Canterbury Tales, uh, I mean Tales of the Wayside Inn.

Nice little restaurant there for anyone who happens to be traveling around up that way and looking for a quaint old tyme place to eat.

Oh, also right handy to that place where the cussed British Department of Homeland Security went out one day in April of ’75 to round up the colonist’s cannons and gunpowder supplies (not their assault muskets, by the way).

Heh – sorry, in Massachusetts mileage terms it’s a little bit of a drive away to the Concord Bridge and Lexington Green, in Texas mileage terms it’s all “just over yonder” from Sudbury.


Comment from Drew458
Time: July 15, 2022, 1:14 am

Durned, that Red Mill is worth millions in tourist draw every year. It’s so iconic it’s on everything. Red Mill wine. Jigsaw puzzles. You name it. Google it; you find thousands of hits.

Few even notice the older and far more historically important bridge right next to it, one of the earliest and last remaining examples of combination cast and forged iron bridges in the world, iron mined and forged locally. Ok, they take it’s picture because it’s pretty too, especially at Christmas, but nobody knows the history. Lambertville Iron Works. Wm Lowthorpe. Not to mention all the lovingly restored Victorian and Federalist homes a block or two away … Clinton does quaint and picturesque far beyond twee, and it’s done without effort. This is just how the town is, mostly still stuck in 1874 like the rest of the county. It gets rural and farmy just 1/2 mile away. This makes it just about the nicest place to live in NJ, and the sky high taxes and real estate prices make sure that no lesser elements ever move here. And I like that just fine, thanks. We have bears wandering around downtown too, one so much that they named him “Clint” on the town’s facebook page.

PS don’t tell anyone but it’s also the radon capitol of the USA. The whole radon remediation thing was started on the hill above the mill. Tracking the rate of breast cancer and prostate cancer in the area for 40+ years shows it’s no different than anywhere else. In other words, the radon scare is BS.

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