The Sandleford Warren,

in March 1982.

Sandleford, Looking towards the warren site From chapter 1, 'The Notice Board':       'The Primroses were over. Towards the edge of the wood where the ground became open and sloped down to an old fence and a brambly ditch beyond, only a few fading patches of pale yellow still showed among the dog's mercury and oak tree roots. On the other side of the fence, the upper part of the field was full of rabbit holes. In places the grass was gone altogether and everywhere there were clusters of dry droppings, through which nothing but the ragwort would grow. A hundred yards away, at the bottom of the slope, ran the brook, no more than three feet wide, half-choked with king-cups, water-cress and blue brook-lime. The cart track crossed by a brick culvert and climbed the opposite slope to a five barred gate in the thorn hedge. The gate led into the lane.'

These are the first of the over 190,000 words that are Watership Down. They took fifteen months to write, all handwritten with fountain pen on foolscap paper; six months to edit and type; ten months to be accepted for publication, and two years more to finally get into print. In all Watership Down took five years to go from an idea to a book.

This is the opening paragraph of Richard Adams's Watership Down. He wrote those words in the mid-sixties. Twenty years later the scene, though changed, was still very recognizable, indeed it still is! Here you are looking towards the site of the Sandleford Warren, that's it over there on the opposite slope beyond the hedge, compare this with the opening of the film. In the book, the gate and the notice board are out of sight to the left behind the copse by which you are standing; in the film they are moved to just to the left of the end of the hedge, where no humans could have seen it! The cart-track is long gone, as indeed are the horse-drawn carts, however the culvert crossing the brook is still there but is hidden by the tree on the left. Many readers think that this area has been developed and expect to see a housing estate here but no, the fate of the Sandleford Warren in Watership Down has not yet been forced on it's real life counterpart.

Sandleford, with the culvert centre-left and gate just off picture to the left. The cart-track is gone, becoming just another part of the field.

You have just stepped out away from the trees and can now see round to the culvert which Graham, who accompanied me on some of my visits, can be seen photographing. The end of the hedge is just visible on the extreme right. The once five-barred wooden gate to the lane, now a glavanised steel tubular thing, which we unknowingly had just walked up are off to the left. If we had known that at the time.... The town of Newbury starts just beyond the trees that can be seen in the distance.