Esther Hallam Meynell nee Moorhouse; (1878 –1955) was an English novelist and biographer and Ditchling resident.

Esther wrote:  “The Downs of central Sussex deserve praise in that they are most truly typical of all one means when one speaks of the South Downs.  The simplicity of their line, hardly broken by anything bigger than a twisted thorn bush or a patch of gorse, is more significantly Sussex than Arundel’s great woods sweeping across the curved hills.  From the shoulder of Wolstonbury to the blunt nose of Firle Beacon looking across the gap to The Caburn, what a marvellous range it is, so bare, so beautiful, with its small incidents like Clayton Windmills and the thin windswept clump of trees on Black Cap, gaining an almost fantastic value from the great simplicity of that line.”