The bridge at Stopham has seven arches of Midhurst stone and Hythe sandstone: a tall central span flanked by three lower round-headed arches on each side, with small triangular refuges built out over the cutwaters where someone could once step aside from a cart. It carries the old road across the River Arun. Historic England dates it to probably 1422–23, rejecting the older tradition of 1309. One span was destroyed in the Civil War and replaced by a drawbridge, fenced off in 1650; the centre arch was raised in 1821 and carries the inscription "J.S.A. July 7 1822". Army lorries damaged it badly during the Second World War.
Stopham is a very small settlement. It sits inside the South Downs National Park beside the Arun, and it amounts to a bridge, a church, an estate and a vineyard strung along the river rather than anything with a conventional high street.
The vineyard is a place you can buy something. Stopham Vineyard grows Sussex wine and runs tours of the vines and winery that end in a tasting, led by the winemakers Simon or Tom, or by Adderley, who manages the vineyard. The bottles to look for are the Pinot Gris, the Bacchus, a barrel-aged Pinot Blanc and a sparkling wine from the 2021 vintage.
The White Hart stood beside the bridge, a low country pub with oak beams, alcoves, four rooms across two levels and a log fire, its garden and marquee running down to the water. It closed in April 2026, its future uncertain, so for now, pub options are in Pulborough, about a mile away.
St Mary the Blessed Virgin is described by Historic England as a "very good medieval church, unrestored". The chancel and nave are early Norman, the windows 13th and 14th century, the low west tower rebuilt around 1600. Inside is a sequence of Barttelot family brasses beginning in the early 15th century, mural tablets to the same family, an early-13th-century piscina, and a heraldic east window assembled in 1638 from older glass carried over from the manor house. Some of the 17th-century glass is signed by a Flemish glazier named Roelant.
The Barttelots have been here since 1379, when John Barttelot married Joan de Stopham, the local heiress. The family served with the Coldstream Guards in both World Wars; their memorials are in the church and on the war memorial by the green. Stopham House, once Ford House and now divided into flats, was their seat: Elizabethan or older at its core, rebuilt in 1887 by Walter Barttelot, with a ballroom wing added in 1898.
The Domesday commissioners found nine households here in 1086, four villagers, four smallholders and one enslaved man, with eight acres of meadow, woodland for ten pigs and three fisheries on the river.
A walk links Stopham to Fittleworth and Bedham on a circular route that passes Brinkwells, the cottage Edward Elgar rented from 1917 to 1921 and where he composed his cello concerto in a garden studio. The path also passes the derelict former school and chapel at Bedham, whose bells Elgar's wife Alice heard ring out the peace at the end of the First World War.
Pulborough station is about a mile away, run by Southern, with buses, parking and cycle storage. Stagecoach's service 1 stops at both Stopham Bridge and Church Lane and runs on to Petworth, Midhurst, Storrington and Worthing. The same bus takes you to Petworth House, with its Turners and Van Dycks and a 700-acre deer park laid out by Capability Brown; RSPB Pulborough Brooks is a couple of miles off, though its footpath can become muddy or impassable after river flooding.
The refuges over the cutwaters were built so pedestrians could step clear of passing traffic. Stand in one now and watch the Arun go under.