Woolbeding is a village and

ecclesiastical parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

in the District of Chichester in

West Sussex West Sussex is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Surrey to the north, East Sussex to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Hampshire to the west. The largest settlement is Cr ...

, England, north-west of

Midhurst Midhurst () is a market town and civil parish in the Chichester District in West Sussex, England. It lies on the River Rother (Western), River Rother, inland from the English Channel and north of Chichester. The name Midhurst was first reco ...

and north of the River Rother and

A272 road The A272 is a road in southeast England. It follows an approximate east–west route from near Heathfield, East Sussex to the city of Winchester, Hampshire. Route The eastern end of the A272 starts at a junction with the A267, north-west ...

. The

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

of Woolbeding with Redford has a land area of . The 2001 census recorded 158 people living in 70 households, of whom 83 were economically active.

History

Woolbeding was listed in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

(1086) in the ancient

hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numerals, Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 (number), 99 and preceding 101 (number), 101. In mathematics 100 is the square of 10 (number), 10 (in scientific notation it is written as 102). The standar ...

Easebourne Easebourne () is a village, Anglican parish and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England. It is half a mile (0.8 km) north of Midhurst, across the River Rother on the A272 and A286 roads. The parish includes the h ...

as having 24 households: 14 villagers, 5 smallholders and five slaves; with woodland, ploughing land, meadows, a mill and church, it had a value to the lord of the manor of £6. Woolbeding Bridge across the River Rother is a medieval one, with three arches and two cutwaters. The large 18th century

country house image:Blenheim - Blenheim Palace - 20210417125239.jpg, 300px, Blenheim Palace - Oxfordshire An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a Townhou ...

, Woolbeding House, is a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

. It was the home of the late Simon Sainsbury of the Sainsbury supermarket family. The

National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...

owns the Woolbeding Estate, which includes Woolbeding and Pound Commons which are

Sites of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...

. Telegraph Hill, from Woolbeding, was the site of a station on the

semaphore line An optical telegraph is a line of stations, typically towers, for the purpose of conveying textual information by means of visual signals (a form of optical communication). There are two main types of such systems; the semaphore telegraph whic ...

from London to Portsmouth which operated from 1822 to 1847. It was previously called "Holder" or "Older" Hill. In 1861, the parish's area was , with a population of 338.

Parish church

All Hallows parish church is a Grade I

. The oldest parts of the church are

Saxon The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian " stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like th ...

. The tower is small, with eight short pinnacles in a vaguely medieval style. It was built in 1728 but it has

lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a sharp pointed arch at its top. This arch may or may not be a steep lancet arch (in which the compass centres for drawing the arch fall outside the opening). It acquired the "lancet" name from its rese ...

s that look like re-used Saxon or

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 9th and 10th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norma ...

ones. The present

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...

and was built in 1870 but the nave has tall Anglo-Saxon proportions, with plain

pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

s from ground to roof, and a blocked doorway. There are more pilasters on the north wall, including a truncated one with traces of a filled-in window above it. The quoins are of large stones. These features suggest a Saxon date for the main body of the church. Inside the church is a wall monument to Lady Dame Margaret Mill, wife of Sir Richard Mill of Woolbeding, daughter of Robert Knollys, Esq., of "Grove Place, Co. Southampton", died 1744, aged 56. The coat of arms shown is ''Per fesse Argent and Sable, a pale, and three bears salient, two and one, counterchanged, muzzled and chained Or'', impaling ''Gules, on a chevron Argent three roses of the field, a canton Argent'' (recte: ''Ermine'' ). Next to a wall that separates the churchyard from the grounds of the manor house is a miniature mausoleum with Tuscan columns and square pilasters, with a frieze of military trophies such as pikes, rifles, cannon, battleaxes, drums and a helmet. There is a line of ancient yew trees near the church.

Woolbeding poets

The English Romantic poet

Charlotte Turner Smith Charlotte Smith (née Turner; – ) was an English novelist and poet of the School of Sensibility whose '' Elegiac Sonnets'' (1784) contributed to the revival of the form in England. She also helped to set conventions for Gothic fiction and wr ...

lived at Woolbeding House in the mid-1780s. Two poets grew up in the parish, each the son of a Rector of All Hallows parish, but in different centuries:

Thomas Otway Thomas Otway (3 March 165214 April 1685) was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for '' Venice Preserv'd'', or ''A Plot Discover'd'' (1682). Life Otway was born at Trotton near Midhurst, the parish of which his father ...

(1652-1685) and

Francis William Bourdillon Francis William Bourdillon (22 March 1852 at Runcorn, Cheshire, England – 13 January 1921 at Buddington, Midhurst) was a British poet and translator. He is known also as a bibliophile. Life Born at Trinity Parsonage, Halton Road, Runcorn, Che ...

(1852-1921); whose father was Rector from 1855 to 1875.

References

Sources

External links

Woolbeding with Redford Parish CouncilFurther historical information and sources on GENUKI
{{authority control Civil parishes in West Sussex Chichester District