Two of the three moles on the sign outside the Three Moles come from the Mitford family crest. The origin of the third is a mystery the pub has never resolved. William Townley Mitford built the place in 1872 as the Railway Inn, directly opposite the station, and renamed it six months later. The station is gone. The pub is still here, which is really the whole story of Selham told in one building.
You reach the village down a lane running south from the A272 between Petworth and Midhurst, and it does not so much begin as gradually happen: a scatter of houses along wet pasture near the River Rother, streams and pinewoods and heath pressing in from every side. There is no centre to speak of. What Selham has is a church, a pub, and a lot of walking.
The Three Moles is a small country pub that describes itself as the village living room, and on a quiet weekday that is roughly the size of it. Tom and Ollie have run it since 2017. There are two regular cask beers, Skinner's Betty Stogs and St Austell Tribute, alongside changing guests that often include something from Langham up the road. The kitchen leans on Sunday roasts — venison and pork, spiced red cabbage, stuffing, Yorkshire pudding and cauliflower cheese — with roast ciabattas through the summer months and empanadas also on the menu. Dogs on leads are welcome. Children are not: the pub bans under-12s throughout, garden included, so plan around that if you are travelling with young ones. The side garden is large enough that the pub takes wedding receptions for up to 120.
The church is the older survivor. St James is Grade I listed, its nave and square chancel dating to the 11th century, with herringbone masonry in the walls and a carved chancel arch decorated with geometric ornament and small beasts. The font is a plain tub, probably late 11th century. The west tower had already vanished by 1791; the bell-cote you see now is Victorian. William de Braose handed the church to Rusper Nunnery some time before 1204, which is about as much drama as the place has seen.
For a settlement this quiet, the Domesday entry is oddly precise. In 1086 Selham held six households — two villagers, two smallholders and two enslaved people — with seventeen acres of meadow, woodland for ten swine, and a mill worth ten shillings. The whole manor was valued at three pounds four shillings, down from four pounds twenty years earlier.
The walking is the main reason to base yourself here. A 7¼-mile circuit links Selham with Graffham and Lavington Common across heath and mixed woodland, briefly following the bed of the dismantled Pulborough–Midhurst railway. A longer route, nearly nine and a half miles, crosses the Cowdray Estate and its golf course by way of Lodsworth and Ambersham before returning beside the Rother. In winter the low ground near Selham floods, so bring boots.
Provisions mean a short drive to the Lodsworth Larder, a community-run shop stocking local asparagus, Goodwood Dairy, Young's butchery, Sødt bakery and, since 2026, fresh fish from Johnson's. Petworth House, with its Turner and Van Dyck canvases and Capability Brown deer park, sits under three miles away, and the fire-gutted Tudor shell of Cowdray is closer still.
The station building itself is now somebody's house. Passenger trains stopped in 1955; freight continued until 1963, and the pub built to greet them kept the lights on.