ifespan. Visitors are usually impressed by quality items in one’s house. Nonetheless, who wouldn’t want to be complimented by guest for the quality of their rugs or carpets? Best materials for a long-lasting and beautiful display can be silk or wool; with a great combination of color and patterns.
Hand woven rugs are somewhat more durable than machine produced ones. In Africa, most rugs are handmade, where women expertly make rugs using cotton strings and sometimes woollen hides. Most of them make rugs and carpet to sell to tourists.
Traditionally designed rugs and carpets remain ever popular. Their patterns produce a unique display of art that can last generations. Some of our most beautiful stately homes display ancient rugs and carpets as decorative wallhangings - the posters of their day!
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As anyone who lives in the beautiful Sussex town of Horsham knows, it’s an endearing place, lively, individual and beloved by its inhabitants and visitors alike.
Horsham is an ancient market town, with much of its history still on show when you stroll around away from the centre.
There’s a great Facebook group called Memories of Horsham to find out more and to see some wonderful historic photos, with many of the members having spent 70 or 80 years in the district.
Horsham District Council covers over 132,000 people, though most of the population live in the outlying towns and villages. The town itself has far fewer people, but some of the local villages are growing rapidly as Sussex is bombarded with demands for more housing.
As I write, Southwater is adding a huge new settlement and the same thing is happening with Billingshurst. These two villages lie to the south of Horsham and are taking the brunt of more rural development, with their boundaries bursting into the surrounding countryside. It’s sad to see for those of us who love the rural nature of the district, but housing needs fuel all and large building companies benefit at the expense of local residents who’d like to add an odd house here or there. But that’s a subject for another day!
Horsham itself is expanding rapidly too. Currently there is a planning application for a large new settlement to the north of the town, the other side of the A264 bypass. That proposal includes new schools and even a railway station. It will lie between Horsham and Crawley, further narrowing the strategic gap between the two.
Then there’s massive building to the immediate south of the town, effectively merging Horsham into Broadbridge Heath. The latter used to be a small village with its own character, but the building of dual carriageways and hundreds of houses on former farmland has destroyed its individuality and sucked it into the growing urbanisation of Horsham. It's hard to see an area that has such a rural nature becoming so much larger and losing much of its character, but somehow Horsham has managed to retain much of its charm.
At the heart of the town is the Carfax – meaning the meeting of 4 or more roads apparently. It’s pretty-much pedestrianised these days, though there is still a one-way road around the edge. It’s a delightful area housing the war memorial and bandstand and hosts regular farmers markets, occasional French markets and the annual fair. It’s a meeting place, somewhere to sit and watch the world go by on the lovely afternoon. And although many shops have disappeared, you can still buy cheeses, ice creams and antiques from the little shops around the Carfax.
The best-preserved ancient area of Horsham is The Causeway. A stroll down this lane to the beautiful St Mary’s Church will take you back in time. Fortunately it’s not a through-way so there’s little traffic and it remains a calm and peaceful area, away from the bustle of the Carfax. The Causeway also houses Horsham Museum, which is full of interesting artefacts and a great place to start if you wish to find out more about our town.
Part-way down the Causeway, on the opposite side of the road from the m