Shaun Cooper has recently answered my long-standing quest as to whether the localised cloud phenomenon, an example of which is shown above, has a name. I have witnessed it often over the years. At the following two locations it appears quite frequently in wet, fairly still and damp conditions, these being over Friston Forest in the lee of South Hill at Friston, and in the wooded valley to the north of the main historic house at Pippingford Park on Ashdown.
Shaun wrote the following article on the ‘Sussex In History’s’ Facebook page. “This photograph shows ‘foxes brewings,’ which are odd mists that rise out of the beech hangers along the northern escarpment of the Downs between Bury and Cocking. “When foxes brewings turn to Cocking, then foxes brewings will come a-dropping” is a phrase which was used to indicate that it would soon rain over there. The earliest reference to foxes brewings seems to have been by Sussex historian M. A. Lower in his ‘History of Sussex’ (1870). The above photo was taken by Jonathan Newdick after he had read my article ‘Of foxes brewings, foxes, and fox fire’ for the Petworth Society Magazine (June 2020), the photo having been taken in March near Glatting Farm, Sutton in West Sussex.”
He goes on to write: “I’m inclined to suspect that the ‘foxes’ of foxes brewings originally referred to the little folks, the fairies, as in British folklore there are no references to foxes who made their own food or drink, indeed were more apt to steal food, whereas there are lots of tales and lore to do with fairies baking and drinking.” However, I don’t know if this term was used in East Sussex?
Lower wrote in 1896: “A curious phenomenon is observable in this neighbourhood. From the leafy recesses of the layers of beech on the escarpment of the Down, there rises in unsettled weather a mist which rolls among the trees, like the smoke out of a chimney. This exhalation is called ‘Foxes Brewings’, whatever that may mean, and if it tends westward towards Cocking, rain follows speedily, hence the local proverb: ”When foxes-brewings go to cocking, foxes-brewings come back dropping”