Findon

Old beams and a village spared the traffic

The Gun Inn keeps a dog called Missy, allowed in the bar, and has welcomed visitors since 1619. The dark beams inside are original. Sally Harris and her family took the place on in 2010, with four children between them; before that, she had never pulled a pint. Sunday lunch includes slow-roasted belly of pork, braised shoulder of lamb and roast chicken, while the pub hosts themed evenings. The Ringwood bitter is kept well.

The Square sits at the crossing of old roads, where most of Findon's flint and brick buildings gather. The A24 has skirted the village since the bypass opened in 1938, taking north–south traffic out of the centre and leaving the historic heart to pubs and shops.

Four bars and the village that bought its shop

The Black Horse, run by Jen and Andrew, leans on local ingredients and keeps a bookable skittle alley that can host up to forty people. The menu is short and unfussy: chicken thigh and chips, fish goujons and chips, sausage and chips, fried halloumi and chips, and a vegan spring roll with chilli and chips. The Village House, also in The Square, has eight B&B rooms, Harvey's Best on the bar and Thai specials among the home cooking. A little way off, the country bar at Findon Manor faces a lawned garden and pours Harvey's of Lewes with changing guest beers. Breakfast uses eggs from across the road, bacon from two miles away, sausages from the village butcher and award-winning black pudding.

That butcher is Peckhams, in The Square, run by Nick Hamilton and supplying the pubs, restaurants and café around it. For everything else there is Findon Village Store and Post Office. The century-old shop closed without warning in May 2017, and the village bought it back, reopened it and now runs it with a manager, Angus Charlton, and around thirty volunteers. It won the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service in 2022; Hugh Bonneville was among the deputies on hand when the award was presented. If you want to sit down to dinner, Sylvan Oak does British and European cooking under chef Sinan Kalan, and Tajdar handles the curries.

Twin naves beneath one roof

St John the Baptist is a flint church larger than a downland village of this size would lead you to expect, with two naves set side by side beneath a single roof and a thirteenth-century screen still standing between the north chancel and nave. It is a medieval building of considerable character and charm. Gilbert Scott restored it in 1867, but the walls are mostly thirteenth-century and the arcade older still.

Flint mines, butterflies and an escape route

The walking is the real reason to base yourself here. Cissbury Ring rises a little over a mile to the east. The sixty-five-acre hillfort has more than 270 Neolithic flint-mine pits in the south-western part of Cissbury Hill, some shafts twelve metres deep, and on a clear day the view reaches the Seven Sisters and the Isle of Wight. The chalk grassland holds round-headed rampion, the "Pride of Sussex", and chalkhill and Adonis blue butterflies. Shorter loops run from the village, including the Nepcote Circular at under two miles, while the Monarch's Way follows Charles II's escape route after Worcester in 1651.

The sheep fair and the plastic ewe

Findon's sheep fair has been held on Nepcote Green since before 1785. Flocks were once driven across the Downs to Steyning station until the line closed in the 1960s, and the numbers sold fell from more than fifteen thousand to three thousand, so what survives now is a festival with judging and shearing rather than a working market. In 2001, when foot-and-mouth forced the fair to be cancelled, the organisers set a single plastic ewe out on the green so the day would not pass unmarked.