Woodland lanes and village stories
Binsted
A dispersed West Sussex village where public footpaths, a Norman church and an unusually rich artistic thread meet the woods.
- Best for
- Woodland walks, church details and a pub meal
- Character
- Small fields, hedges, brooks and ancient woodland
- Road warning
- The eastern Binsted Lane is unmade and unsuitable for cars
The Fox verdict
A scattered village that rewards a plan
Binsted has no compact centre; its appeal lies along the lanes, public paths and wooded edges between the church and the pub.
Come for a quiet combination of landscape and lived history: examine the medieval fabric and unusual mosaic floor at St Mary’s, choose a themed walk through Binsted Woods, then allow time for the Black Horse’s seasonal cooking and valley-facing garden. Arundel adds provisions and a wetland visit without pretending they are in the village.
Where to go
Places in Binsted
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesBinsted Wildflower Walk
A figure-of-eight route with a local booklet keyed to the wildflowers found through the year, using St Mary’s as one of its documented starting points.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 90 minutes
- Locality
- public paths around Binsted
- Access
- The published page does not state a distance; use the local flower booklet and choose a suitable circuit before setting out.
Forest Knights
Wayne Jones’s scheduled woodland courses include bushcraft, bow-making, fire-lighting, foraging and green woodworking.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 3 hours
- Locality
- Binsted Woods
- Access
- Courses are scheduled activities; arrange participation with Forest Knights and confirm the meeting point and course length.
WWT Arundel Wetland Centre
A wetland centre with wildlife watching, wetland habitats, guided boat safaris, aviaries, Pelican Cove and family activities.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 2½ hours
- Locality
- Mill Road, Arundel
- Access
- Check the official visitor page before travel for current access and activities.
Food & drink
2 placesThe Black Horse
A food-led rural pub run by Clive and Victoria Smith, with seasonal menus and a south-west-facing garden overlooking the golf course and valley.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Binsted
- Access
- Dogs are welcome on leads when mentioned at booking, but not in the dining room; seasonal dishes can change.
Pallant of Arundel
An independent specialist shop for English and Continental cheeses, charcuterie, pies, quiches, Sussex beers and wines from local vineyards.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Arundel
Walks & outdoors
2 placesBinsted Art & Literature Walk
A self-guided route through Binsted Woods linking the landscape with the village’s local art and writing.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 2 hours
- Locality
- Binsted Woods
- Access
- Use the self-guided route material to stay on the intended public paths.
Slindon Estate
A 3,500-acre National Trust landscape with downland, woodland, family geocaching and more than 25 miles of public rights of way.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 2 hours
- Locality
- west of Binsted
- Access
- Choose a route suited to your available time from the National Trust visitor information.
History & heritage
2 placesChurch of St Mary
A Grade II* church of mid-12th-century origin, with Norman windows, a carved circular font, a medieval wall painting and a Powell & Sons mosaic chancel floor.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 45 minutes
- Locality
- above the Binsted Rife valley
Binsted History Walk
A route leaflet adapted by Connie Shirley of Worthing Archaeological Society from the village’s 2017 festival walk.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 90 minutes
- Locality
- public footpaths around Binsted
- Access
- Use the route leaflet to identify the public paths before setting out.
Things to do
1 placeRatpack Field Archers
An organised field-archery activity using about 25 acres of Binsted Woods.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 2½ hours
- Locality
- Binsted Woods
- Access
- Arrange participation with the organisation; do not treat the woods as an informal archery range.
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Three ways to explore Binsted
Signature outings
Supper above the valley
Time a meal at the Black Horse for its seasonal cooking, changing desserts and south-west-facing garden over the golf course and valley.
Norman details and mosaic colour
Look for the round-arched windows, carved circular font, surviving wall painting and Cosmati-style chancel floor inside St Mary’s.
A landscape with a literary thread
Use the self-guided Art & Literature Walk to connect Binsted Woods with the artists and writers associated with the village.
The village story
Binsted Village Guide
A pub garden, an ancient church and a wooded network of paths reveal the stories held by this scattered West Sussex village.
Garden suppers and wartime warmth
The garden behind the Black Horse faces south-west, over a golf course and down into the valley, and on a clear evening it is the best seat in Binsted. Clive and Victoria Smith run the pub, and the menu changes with the season. The desserts are the part worth planning around: warm chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream, sticky toffee pudding, lemon posset with shortbread and raspberry sorbet, summer pudding with elderflower. Children get fish fingers, scampi, sausages, or rigatoni with tomato sauce. Dogs are welcome on leads if you say so when you book, though not in the dining room.
The pub has been the centre of the village for far longer than the food menu. Harry Pethers was landlord from 1928 to 1968, and his wife Win took over after him. During the war, when nearby Ford was bombed, villagers sheltered at the Black Horse. Bill Pethers, born at the pub in 1940, remembered his family's own shelter flooding while the pub stayed dry: "At the Black Horse it was warm, it was light." In the 1960s the village took to electing a "Mayor of Binsted," and the first man they chose was Harry.
Provisions and the unmade lane
For provisions you drive the two miles to Arundel, where Pallant of Arundel sells English and Continental cheeses, charcuterie, pies, and Sussex beers and wines. Binsted Nursery, run by the Tristram family since 1978, grows herbs and container plants, but it is a wholesale supplier rather than somewhere to buy your dinner.
Binsted never gathered itself into a centre. It is a spread-out, wooded place of small fields, hedges, brooks and pasture, threaded by the curving Binsted Lane, and it stayed an independent parish until the 1930s. Come off the A27 and the approach runs through a short tunnel of trees. One warning worth heeding: the eastern arm of Binsted Lane, towards Tortington, is unmade and unsuitable for cars, and satnavs will send you down it anyway.
St Mary’s and the Wishart thread
The Church of St Mary stands above the steep Binsted Rife valley, flint with ashlar dressings, its origins in the mid-twelfth century. Inside are Norman round-arched windows, a carved circular font of the late twelfth century, a medieval piscina and aumbry, and the stumps of a fourteenth-century rood beam. A surviving wall painting shows a three-branched tree and a crowned woman, thought to be St Mary or St Margaret of Antioch. The chancel floor is an opus-sectile mosaic by Powell & Sons, laid in a Cosmati style and reported as the first use of the rediscovered technique for flooring. Thomas Graham Jackson restored the building in 1868 and 1869, when it had become unsafe. The artist Michael Wishart is buried in the churchyard.
The Wisharts brought an artistic thread to this quiet corner. In 1952 or 1953 Lorna Wishart set up a shrine to the Madonna beside a pond here, in memory of her mother; the life-size figure had come from Italy and been blessed by the Pope. It was later vandalised and replaced with a smaller plaster copy, now kept behind a brick surround and an iron grille. Local folklore holds the pond to be bottomless. Luke Jennings, who later invented the characters of Killing Eve, wrote in Blood Knots about trying to land a large fish there as a boy.
Paths through the woods, back to the pond
Beyond the lanes are about 250 acres of woodland, crossed by eleven public paths and reachable on foot from Arundel through National Park country. Walk materials cover the wildflowers, the history and the local art and literature. Forest Knights runs bushcraft, bow-making and green-woodworking courses in the woods, and the Ratpack Field Archers use some twenty-five acres for archery. The nearest trains are at Barnham.
Back by the pond, the plaster Madonna keeps her place behind the grille, watching over the pond that locals still call bottomless.
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- The Black Horse — theblackhorsebinsted.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Church of St Mary — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- Binsted Wildflower Walk — binsted.org operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Binsted History Walk — binsted.org operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Binsted Art & Literature Walk — binsted.org operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Forest Knights — forestknights.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Ratpack Field Archers — binsted.org other published source
- WWT Arundel Wetland Centre — visitarundel.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Slindon Estate — nationaltrust.org.uk national body or asset manager
- Pallant of Arundel — visitarundel.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation