Duncton

The Inn and Its Cricketing Story

The Cricketers stands on the A285 with an oak bar, low sixteenth-century beams and a large inglenook fireplace. The kitchen sends out beer-battered fish and chips with mushy peas, steak, ale and mushroom pie, ham with free-range eggs and chips, battered halloumi, haddock and prawn fishcakes, and an apple and mixed-berry crumble, all home-cooked. Flower Pots Bitter is the regular cask ale, with a changing guest beside it. Dogs are welcome, there is a large garden at the back, and once a month there is a quiz. One regular, D Sutton, called it a "charming, family-friendly pub. Great menu with lots of choice and very generous portions."

The pub was once the Swan, owned by the Manor of Duncton until 1814 and had an attached brewery recorded in 1840. In 1867 John Wisden, the cricketer whose almanack still carries his name, bought it, renamed it and leased it to Jem Dean, a Duncton-born fast bowler. Dean reportedly died here on Christmas Day 1881, in the inglenook, with a pint.

At the Foot of the Downs

Duncton itself is strung along the road at the foot of the South Downs scarp, three miles south of Petworth, where the ground tips up sharply into beech woods within half a kilometre of Burton Park's southern boundary. The nearest shop is Ted's, out at Heath End garage rather than in the village, said to sell local fruit and vegetables with a weekly fish market. Down Dye House Lane, Duncton Mill hand-rears trout across four clear lakes and sells the fish as well as the fishing, with rods and tuition to book.

The best walk from here is the Lavington and Duncton circular, five or six miles of mostly flat going on sandy, sometimes muddy woodland tracks over two or three hours. It follows the Serpent Trail across Lavington Common, past the small church at Burton Park, the birds and dragonflies of Chingford Pond, the mill and the pub. This is Ivon Hitchens country: the painter lived and worked on Lavington Common from 1940 until his death in 1979, and the woods and millponds along the route are among the scenery that inspired him.

A Bell Across the Centuries

Holy Trinity, built in 1865-66 for Lord Leconfield of Petworth, replaced the old St Mary's at the foot of Duncton Hill, which was pulled down in 1876. It kept the old church's bell, probably cast in Normandy in 1369 and among the earliest dated swung chimed bells in Britain. Inside are 1860s stained glass, black-and-red tiled floors and an octagonal stone font under an elaborate Gothic timber cover. In the churchyard lies Florence Gertrude de Fonblanque, who in 1912 organised the women's suffrage march from Edinburgh to London.

The place has always been busier than its size suggests. In 1086 the Domesday surveyors recorded four mills here, two fisheries and a church, and valued the whole manor at seven pounds and three shillings.

Art, Deer and Roman Mosaics

Petworth House is three miles north, with Van Dyck, Turner and Gainsborough on the walls and fallow deer in a 700-acre park laid out by Capability Brown. At Bignor a farmer struck a Roman mosaic with his plough in 1811; the villa's dining-room floors are still there, and the same family still helps run the site. Pulborough and Amberley stations are both around five miles off, so it is worth checking which suits your cottage, and the 99 bus runs the Chichester-to-Petworth road through the village, though it's worth checking times before you rely on it.

Learning Croquet Below the Downs

Beside the village hall, Rother Valley Croquet Club keeps two full lawns and a half-size one for teaching, with views up to the Downs. In season the club runs free taster days for newcomers, best arranged with them in advance.