Northchapel

A Pub That Keeps Its Character

Antiques and rustic memorabilia cover the walls of the Half Moon, a fifteenth-century former coaching inn on what is now the A283. Keith Sandieson celebrated forty years as landlord in August 2022. The food is home-cooked, and the one regular cask beer is Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter, a Sussex session bitter. The room has a step-back-in-time feel.

A garden and rear patio add outdoor space, while Whisky, the owner's Shih Tzu, continues the pub-dog tradition after Rex.

The Village and Its Sandstone Church

The village runs in a line along the A283 through a centre of timber-framed, Georgian and Victorian houses gathered around the green and the church. The parish covers three and a half thousand acres of Low Weald clay, most of it inside the South Downs National Park, and its western horizon rises to the highest point in the South Downs National Park.

St Michael's is a Gothic church built of Wealden sandstone. The west tower dates from the early nineteenth century, while the chancel, nave and south porch were added in 1877 by Anthony Salvin. The church is part of a combined benefice with Ebernoe and Lurgashall.

From Shillinglee to Black Down

For walking, a seven-mile loop starts at the village hall and crosses crop fields, Frith Wood and the large mill lake at Shillinglee Park before returning through meadow, oak, gorse and birch, with views towards the western horizon. The easy route includes a hidden marsh, storm-felled trees and occasional crops across one path. Black Down, two miles west, is the highest point in the South Downs National Park. A short National Trust trail climbs to the Temple of the Winds, a curved stone seat above a notable South Downs view.

South down the same road is Petworth House, a seventeenth-century house holding works by Van Dyck, Turner and Gainsborough, set in seven hundred acres of Capability Brown deer park with two lakes.

Petworth and Northchapel's Past

Northchapel takes its name from the former northern chapel and became a parish of its own in 1691. The surrounding woods supported Tudor ironworking, glass-making, quarrying, coppicing and brickmaking, while the Old Forge, timber-framed and tile-hung, dates from the seventeenth century or earlier. The village was also home to the Society of Dependants, a dissenting group founded by John Sirgood and better known as the Cokelers; members lived communally above their combination stores, with their chapel behind. The nickname was popularly linked to Sirgood's preference for cocoa over beer, though the derivation is uncertain.

Getting Here and Village Life

Haslemere station is about five miles by road, on South Western Railway with step-free platforms; Waverley Hoppa provides a limited Northchapel–Haslemere service, and a car helps. The village hall hosts fitness classes, dog training, film shows and children's parties, while the playground's surfacing was repaired beneath the new slide.