West Ashling

The millpond and the village pub

The millpond sits at the centre of West Ashling, broad and spring-fed, with a former watermill on one bank and the Richmond Arms on the other. The water rises from the chalk on the sheltered side of the Downs, gathers here, and drains south through the Bosham Stream towards Chichester Harbour.

The Richmond Arms is the village's pub, on Mill Road, independently run and currently in the hands of Dom and Sam Escott, with two en-suite rooms if you want to stay above the kitchen. The cooking leans on West Sussex meat, fish and vegetables and changes with the season; recent dishes have included chicken-and-bacon terrine, grilled goat's cheese, sirloin steak, beer-battered fish with triple-cooked chips and crisp rolled lamb. There are fresh-fish specials on a blackboard, Sunday roasts, and pizzas from Stoked Kitchen on Mondays. One February visitor, Cindy S, called the crisp rolled lamb "mouth wateringly good." The regular cask beer is Langham Hip Hop, a 4% golden ale, and dogs are welcome. The pub dates to around 1780, and in 2022 it helped revive the village's wooden-duck race, run with actual wooden ducks, which had last been held in the 1980s.

Vines and a mill with two powers

Just outside the village, Ashling Park Estate grows vines and makes wine. Its sparkling cuvées have taken UK trophies, and it also bottles a Pinot Noir gin. The Vineyard Café looks over the rows and does homemade cakes, charcuterie boards with local cheeses, soup, sausage rolls and quiche, with barista coffee and, if you want it, a glass of the estate's own. Dogs are fine here too.

The mill beside the pond is Hackett's Mill, red brick and three storeys, built in 1825. It ground corn, spent eighteen years from 1832 making paper pulp out of rags, then went back to flour and worked on into the 1930s. For a time it carried a small windmill on its roof to help the water along. The rooftop mill's fantail and sweeps came down in 1922, after the neighbours complained about the noise.

Parish stones and paths into the Downs

West Ashling has no church of its own; the parish church is St Mary's at Funtington, a short way off. Its north arcade is 13th-century and its west tower 15th, though an 1859 restoration was heavy-handed enough that Historic England calls the result "savagely restored, in fact largely rebuilt." Inside there is a memorial to the wartime air chief Viscount Portal, an engraved window by Simon Whistler, and a panel to Jessie Sparkes, who lived for 108 years and four months.

For walking, a 6.4km circular links West Ashling with Funtington and East Ashling through Woodend, where the bluebells come out in late spring: easy going, one gate, no stiles, with some road and some mud. For something steeper there is Kingley Vale close by, with its ancient yews and chalk grassland; keep dogs on leads for the livestock.

Arriving and ranging farther

Bosham station is a little over two kilometres south, served by Southern, with step-free access to both platforms. The B2146 runs along the eastern edge towards Chichester, and the A27 lies beyond that. Fishbourne Roman Palace, with its in-situ mosaics, and Chichester Cathedral are both close by.

The hall that pies repaired

The village hall opened in 1923, on land given by the first president of the Women's Institute. After the war, its repairs were paid for partly by selling six hundred Telfers meat pies a week, at fivepence each.