East Marden

The Well and the Vanished Village Services

The well head stands beneath a conical thatched roof on eight rough wooden columns, its wheel, rope and bucket all still in place. The shaft below drops two hundred feet through chalk. Until 1924 this was the village's only water, which tells you most of what you need to know about living at eighty-five metres on a spur of the South Downs, several miles from the nearest river.

East Marden is small: about thirty-two houses gathered around the church, the green and that well. There is no shop and no pub in the village now. In the 1920s and 30s it kept a school, a post office, a visiting baker, a club and a cricket team. All of them have gone.

Two Pubs on the Lanes

For a drink and a meal you go to one of two pubs on the surrounding lanes. The Victoria Inn at West Marden is a family-run country pub built in 1810, with a bar, a log burner and a separate dining room. Charlotte North took it on in 2021. Recent menus have included a homemade shortcrust pie of the week, liver and bacon with mash and onion gravy, cod and chips, BBQ ribs, homemade lasagne and a Cajun chicken burger. Dogs and children are both welcome, and there is a garden with views over the fields. The pub sign was painted by Ralph Ellis, a First World War artist; the front room was once a village shop where you left your payment in a tin. The same owner keeps a shop and tea room over at Compton.

The other pub is the Royal Oak at Hooksway, down a secluded lane off the B2141 in a sixteenth-century cottage. It is a walkers' pub with a large garden, dogs welcome, and cask ales that usually include Langham Hip Hop and Arundel Castle. David Jeffrey and Sarah Warner have run it since 1990. Local lore holds that a sheep-rustler named William "Shagger" Shepherd was shot here around 1680 and never quite left.

Flint, Font and Downland Paths

St Peter's, the flint parish church, is worth the short walk from wherever you are staying. It is small and little restored, with no structural break between nave and chancel and a weatherboarded bell turret at the west end. Inside there is a chalice-shaped font from the late twelfth century, a roof of closely spaced old tie-beams, and a Millennium Tapestry on the north wall. The organ, by tradition, once belonged to Prince Albert and was played by him at St James's Palace.

There is good walking here. A seven-mile circuit from the Royal Oak links three downland churches across ancient field patterns and the steep wooded slopes the locals call hangers; in spring it runs through wild garlic, bluebells and yellow archangel, with later views towards the Trundle and Goodwood racecourse. Another footpath loop passes the thatched well on its way round. Further afield there is Uppark House and its gardens at South Harting, the Weald and Downland Living Museum at Singleton, and the ancient yew forest of Kingley Vale.

Reaching East Marden

Getting here means minor downland lanes off the B2141, with Chichester and Petersfield each a short drive away. The nearest station is Rowlands Castle, about five miles off. On Wednesday mornings a community minibus stops at St Peter's and runs to Rowlands Castle, Stansted Park, Emsworth or Havant Tesco.

Smugglers, Schooling and Greyhound Racing

The village has drawn some unlikely residents over the years. Battine House was home to Major William Battine, who in 1749 sat on the Chichester grand jury that sent members of the Hawkhurst smuggling gang to the gallows; the Manor House later belonged to Brigadier General Alfred Cecil Critchley, who helped form British greyhound racing and staged its first UK race in Manchester in 1926. In 1927 Bertrand and Dora Russell used Battine House as an annex to the experimental Beacon Hill School they had started nearby. Katherine Russell remembered the school's woods and wildlife long afterwards. "It was incomparable," she said.