CANTERBURY IN SUSSEX

BY KIM LESLIE

Some very curious boundaries across Sussex can be discovered in days gone by. Part of Hampshire was once in Sussex whilst Broadwater on the coast had a detached part of its parish miles away up near Horsham. Around Bognor, several parishes and their churches were quite outside the authority of the diocese of Chichester, coming under the diocese of Canterbury in Kent. Pagham, South Bersted, Tangmere and Slindon were completely exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishops of Chichester but subject to the faraway archbishops over in Canterbury. It all goes back to Bishop Wilfrid of Chichester who gifted these parishes to the archbishop in the 7th century. They were known as archbishops’ ‘peculiars’.

The map of 1724 shows the bounds of the Hundred of Aldweek (i.e. Aldwick; a hundred being an ancient civil administrative area), and the Deanery of Pagham (an area for church government) – both highlighted by modern colouring –extending from the sea coast to the edge of the Downs at Slindon, the total area representing the original archbishops’ peculiar.

See how Slindon is connected to the rest of the hundred and deanery by the narrowest finger of land dividing Eastergate and Aldingbourne. In this way this tiny slither of land brought together the archbishops’ territory. The road linking Pagham to Slindon is one of the oldest roads in the Bognor area, at least medieval in origin. Parts of the route still follow much of its ancient alignment along Chalcraft Lane, skirting what is now The Royal Oak (‘The Pink Pub’), across to North Bersted Street, then on northwards to Shripney and Slindon where the archbishops had a former palace on the site of what is now Slindon College. Imagine medieval archbishops of Canterbury with their stately retinues and luggage trains travelling this way on their official duties, such a far cry from today’s busy traffic roaring along these same roads. They frequently stayed at Slindon when visiting their Sussex properties, as did Archbishop Stephen Langton, famed for his leadership in the struggle against King John which led to Magna Carta in 1215. He died here in 1228 and is commemorated in Slindon church.

This historic connection with Canterbury explains why Pagham’s parish church was dedicated to the murdered Archbishop Thomas à Becket. Even today the archbishop is still patron of the living, as he is of South Bersted.

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