South Harting

Spire, Church and Memorial

The spire of the parish church is copper-green, broached, and visible from Harting Down, rising out of a cluster of cottages at the foot of the hill. The church beneath it is cruciform, built of malmstone rubble, and largely the work of about 1300. A fire around 1576 took the original roof, which was rebuilt before the century was out, and a north porch was added as recently as 1938. Historic England lists it as Grade I under the name St Mary, though the parish calls it St Mary and St Gabriel. The Cryll family added a south mortuary chapel around 1610. It was a ruin by the nineteenth century.

In the churchyard stands a thin stone cross designed in 1920 by Eric Gill, working with Desmond Chute, and with Hilary Stratton cutting the backgrounds of its reliefs. Those reliefs show the patron saints of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is the war memorial, and it is listed in its own right.

The White Hart and a Sussex Tribute

South Harting has one pub now, the White Hart, on The Street. A century ago the writer E. V. Lucas counted three — the Ship, the White Hart and the Coach and Horses — so the survivor carries the trade alone. It serves food all day, keeps guest bedrooms, and is used to walkers coming off the South Downs Way, with dogs. There are dog-friendly rooms, a canine menu, and treats from Sir Woofchester's, and you can eat outside. There is a summer menu, and the fish specials change daily.

Lucas liked the place. "We come to what is perhaps the most satisfying village in all Sussex—South Harting," he wrote. "Cool and spacious and retired, it lies under the Downs."

Village Stores and Downland Walks

For everything else there is Harting Village Stores and Post Office on North Lane, owned by Tim and Louise Waller and kept going by the village itself through the Harting Stores Association. Lord Caldecote, Peter Tuke and Colin Waller were among those who worked to preserve it, and early debenture holders raised and ultimately gave more than £22,000. It sells locally sourced bread, milk, fruit and vegetables, cheese, meat and pastries, makes sandwiches in-store each day, and puts out croissants at weekends. The Post Office counter handles postal and banking business.

The reason to come, though, is up the hill. Harting Down begins immediately above the village and gives straight onto the South Downs Way. A four-mile circuit crosses ancient chalk grassland — juniper, scrub, secluded valleys — with views north over the Weald to the North Downs and south to the Isle of Wight. Beacon Hill holds the remains of a Napoleonic telegraph station and an Iron Age hillfort with cross-ridge dykes. A longer loop of six or seven miles runs from the White Hart through fields to Nyewood, passing the old Petersfield-to-Midhurst railway, which opened in 1864 and closed in 1955, and the wooded fort on Torberry Hill. Ten parish routes are mapped in all, from a gentle two miles to seven.

Uppark and Getting Here

About a mile and a half south on the B2146 is Uppark, a house of around 1690 on the crown of the Downs, with gardens, meadow walks and views towards the coast. H. G. Wells spent time there — his mother Sarah worked in the house — and it became Bladesover in his novel Tono-Bungay. Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh married his dairymaid, Mary Ann Bullock, when she was twenty and he was seventy.

Petersfield, five miles off, is the market town and the nearest station. The B2146 and B2141 carry you out towards it and towards Chichester, and the 54 bus and the volunteer-run Harting Minibus cover the same ground for anyone without a car, though it's worth checking times before you set out.

Playing Fields and Old Club Traditions

The playing fields on Petersfield Road — cricket, football, tennis, a pavilion — were bought from Sir Thomas Sopwith in 1947 and given to the village as its Second World War memorial. On Whit Monday the members of the Harting Old Club, a friendly society going back to 1800, still walk from their clubhouse to the church for a sermon, and then sit down to the feast.