Valley views and village stories
Byworth
A tiny stone-built hamlet above the Shimmings Valley, with a historic inn at its heart and Petworth's culture close by.
- Best for
- A valley walk followed by a country-pub pause
- Give it
- A relaxed half day, or longer with Petworth House
- Don't miss
- The Black Horse terrace above Little Switzerland
The Fox verdict
A small hamlet with a big valley outlook
Come for an energetic Shimmings Valley circuit, the old Black Horse and an easy pairing with Petworth's church, food shops and great estate.
Byworth is rewarding precisely because it is compact: the historic inn, steep green valley and memories of vanished village amenities give the place a clear character, while nearby Petworth adds art, architecture, food and parkland.
Where to go
Places in Byworth
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesThe Black Horse Inn
A traditional inn with an older core, an eighteenth-century front, a winter fireplace and a terrace looking across the Shimmings Valley.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 1 hour 15 minutes
- Locality
- Byworth
- Access
- Opening and food service vary; check the venue before travel.
Shimmings Valley Walk
A steep circuit through the valley, passing Lovers Lane, Brinksole Heath, the Haslingbourne stream and the Virgin Mary Spring.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 1 hour 45 minutes
- Locality
- Petworth and Byworth
- Access
- Expect steep and potentially slippery slopes, kissing gates and stiles; fields may contain horses.
The Hungry Guest
A Petworth bakery, butchery, cheesemonger and food shop known for bread, cheese, venison, sausages, brownies and pastries.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Petworth
- Access
- Check current opening details before travel.
History & heritage
2 placesSt Mary the Virgin, Petworth
A medieval parish church with a private gallery linked to Petworth House, notable stained glass and a memorial high altar.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Petworth
Coultershaw Beam Pump
A scheduled 1782 water-wheel-powered triple beam pump, restored after the associated mill was lost in the twentieth century.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Coultershaw, south of Petworth
- Access
- Check visitor access before making a special journey.
Things to do
1 placePetworth House and Park
A seventeenth-century house with major art, Grinling Gibbons carving, historic kitchens, a Capability Brown garden and a 700-acre deer park.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 2 hours 30 minutes
- Locality
- Petworth
- Access
- Check the National Trust site for current access before travel.
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Three ways to explore Byworth
Signature outings
Take the terrace view
Settle at the Black Horse, where the outside terrace looks over the Shimmings Valley known locally as Little Switzerland.
Find Petworth's rare details
Look for the Kempe and Comper stained glass, the German-glass rose window and the high altar commemorating the school bombing.
Pair great art with deer country
Move from paintings and carved interiors to the Capability Brown landscape and 700-acre deer park.
The village story
Byworth Village Guide
An unchanged Travel Fox account of the inn, valley, lost village amenities and the stories that still animate this small hamlet.
The pub above Little Switzerland
The Black Horse stands in Byworth with an eighteenth-century front grafted onto something older, faced in stone rubble with red-brick dressings and a former maltings beside it. Inside there is a large fireplace, a fire kept going through winter, old photographs and prints on the walls, and a separate bar and restaurant. The terrace outside looks down into the Shimmings Valley, which people here call Little Switzerland.
The kitchen runs wider than the size of the place suggests. There is beer-battered cod with hand-cut chips and crushed peas, a char-grilled burger with smoked bacon and cheddar, a Thai red king-prawn curry, pan-roasted guinea-fowl supreme with champ, peas and leeks, calves' liver and smoked bacon, and a sweet aloo curry with dhal, pilau rice and naan. Puddings are sticky toffee and a lemon posset with berries.
A small hamlet, a wider table
The bar keeps cask ale and real cider. Hogs Back TEA and Young's London Original are the regulars, with Arundel Sussex Gold, Bowman Swift One and Young's London Special among the beers that come and go. Dogs are welcome if they stay quiet, on a lead held by a person and off the soft furnishings; well-behaved children are fine in the restaurant and the garden.
Byworth itself is small, a lane of stone cottages a mile east of Petworth, reached by leaving the town on the A283 and turning into The Street. The grocery, post office and bakery that once stood minutes from the pub are long gone, and there is no shop in the hamlet now. For food to carry home you go into Petworth, where The Hungry Guest sells bread, cheese, its own venison, and the sausages and brownies it has won awards for, alongside croissants, tarts and cinnamon buns.
Across the valley to old classrooms
The Shimmings Valley Walk passes through Byworth on its three-mile circuit between Petworth and Byworth, and it earns the word strenuous: steep steps drop into the valley, then a long climb past Lovers Lane and Brinksole Heath, across the Haslingbourne stream and the Virgin Mary Spring. Longer routes run out to Coultershaw Mill and the old Petworth railway station. Expect kissing gates, stiles, long gradients and fields that sometimes hold horses; the odd tall stile means a small dog may need lifting over.
The Gothic building near the pub was the village infant school, put up around 1860. The bell still sits in its pointed north gable, though the school is a house now. On Sundays it doubled as a church, a curate walking over from Petworth for the evening service. Petworth's own parish church, St Mary the Virgin, is the grander thing to see: a thirteenth-century chancel, a private gallery built for the owners of Petworth House, stained glass by Kempe and Comper, and a rose window of German glass the church believes is almost the only English survivor of its kind. Its high altar remembers the children killed when Petworth Boys' School was bombed in 1942.
Great art and remembered regulars
Petworth House is a seventeenth-century house of Van Dycks, Turners and Grinling Gibbons carving, with a Capability Brown pleasure garden and a seven-hundred-acre deer park of fallow deer. The nearest station is Pulborough, with the No. 1 bus running through Petworth and passing within a hundred yards of the Black Horse.
The pub was once kept by a retired Metropolitan policeman and his wife, who moved in with five children soon after his retirement in 1929; he ran the bar and she cooked and washed. Water came up from a well under the scullery, and the little private bar stayed lit by paraffin long after the mains reached the rest of the house. One regular is remembered for arriving on a delivery day with a fox on a lead.
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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 Inn — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- Shimmings Valley Walk — discoverpetworth.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Hungry Guest — thehungryguest.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- St Mary the Virgin, Petworth — stmarypetworth.org operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Petworth House and Park — nationaltrust.org.uk national body or asset manager
- Coultershaw Beam Pump — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access