Trotton

Five arches and a changing village

The A272 crosses the River Rother here on five stone arches, each semicircular span strengthened by five chamfered ribs, with triangular cutwaters rising to the parapet. Historic England calls it one of the finest multi-span stone bridges over the Rother, and tradition links it to Thomas Camoys, though the date has never been settled.

The village is small — 318 people across the parish it shares with Chithurst, in about 140 households — strung along the road and the river. There is no shop, and no pub any more. The Keeper's Arms on Terwick Lane had been an inn for more than 150 years, and a blacksmith's shop before that; it closed in 2014 and is now a house. Ballards Brewery started nearby in a cowshed at Cumbers Farm in 1980, before it moved on to Elsted and then Nyewood.

Paintings, brass and the Camoys

St George's stands just off the road, aisleless and early-fourteenth-century, with no structural break between nave and chancel. It is normally left open. Inside, the west wall carries a late-fourteenth-century Last Judgement, uncovered from beneath limewash in 1904: Christ on a rainbow above Moses with the Tablets, the Seven Acts of Mercy set in roundels, the Seven Deadly Sins issuing from the mouths of dragons. On the north wall, four armoured figures bear the Camoys arms; one holds a hunting dog on a lead beside dead game.

On the nave floor lies the brass of Margaret Camoys, made around 1310 and among the earliest life-size brass effigies in England. She wears a wimple, and her feet rest on a dog. In the chancel, Thomas, Lord Camoys and his wife Elizabeth Mortimer lie holding hands beneath a double canopy. He commanded the left flank of the English line at Agincourt in 1415. She had earlier been married to Harry Hotspur.

From Otway to the Rother Valley

The dramatist Thomas Otway was born here in 1652, the son of the curate, and is remembered by a Latin inscription inside the church; he wrote Venice Preserv'd. In 1086, Trotton was valued at £5; the entry records one mill and one church.

Most of the walking starts at the bridge. A flat four-mile circuit follows the Rother from Iping, past the eleventh-century church at Chithurst — small, on a mound above the river, reached over a mossy stone bridge — to Trotton's arches and St George's, then out to Terwick Mill and the sandy heath of Trotton and Iping Commons. It takes about two hours and has several stiles, with cattle and horses in places and no toilets on the way. The commons carry a stretch of the Serpent Trail across lowland heath, where nightjars have been recorded at dusk.

Food beyond the village

For food you leave the village. Aylings, a garden centre and tearoom on the A272 towards Midhurst, does a full English, jacket potatoes, toasties, weekly specials and homemade puddings, and has a fenced play area with swings and a climbing frame for children aged 4–12; supervision required. George Ayling started it in 1934 on three acres he bought for £300.

The nearest pubs are a mile or so away in Elsted. The Three Horseshoes, sixteenth-century, sits up on the ridge with views south to the Downs; it keeps at least three gravity-poured ales and welcomes dogs on a lead in a garden full of roses. The Elsted Inn is close by. Midhurst is three miles east along the A272, on the Stagecoach 92, which stops at the church; Petersfield station is about seven miles the other way.

A meadow made by the community

The village keeps a wildflower meadow that began as a memorial to Chris Hodgson, a former chairman of the parish council. Volunteers seeded it and planted an elm, and in 2023 they held a coronation party there. Once a year there is a fete and a duck race on the Rother, which the village counts as its high point.