
Too rarely, I cross the county to the Ancestral Heartlands, in reality the provenance of just one quarter of my family. On my mother’s side there was less adherence to family origins: her barber father from a Scottish immigrant family in Luton, her straw-plaiting mother from a downland family just outside the town. Both my grandmothers grew up on chalk. On my father’s father’s side, a line of coach-builders and undertakers from the railway arches at Deptford, wives from there or Bermondsey until my grandmother moved from the South Downs to the city to work as a domestic servant.

From the country suburb of Bromley, my father & his siblings holidayed with relatives in East Lavant, just north of Chichester, remaining strongly attached to that area and identifying with it so exclusively that it was only in late adult life that I fully realised the London connection. When I and my sisters were very little we too spent time in smoky flint cottages at the foot of the Trundle, whence come some of my very earliest memories (the others from our state-of-the-art prefab in SE London).

Too rarely in adult life I’ve returned to the Chichester area – not to watch birds but to explore flint villages, walk on the Downs and poke around churchyards. The Lavant – a winterbourne – springs in East Dean, on the north side of the Trundle – a massive chalk dome surmounted by neolithic & Iron Age earthworks – curving round its west side before flowing south through Chichester and out at Dell Quay.

From this family tree you can see that my antecedents moved downstream, village by village, over the course of the 19th century: East Dean, Charlton, Singleton, Mid Lavant, E Lavant. How long before that the Norrells lived in that same valley I’ve not discovered, although the head of the tree was born the other side of the road at Funtington and there were two other incomers: Kezia & Ann, both of Welsh origin.

Last year we rented a cottage in Singleton – the kind in which my forebears would have raised numerous children but now stand empty for the most part as second homes with expensive cars outside.

The families were employed in various capacities on the Goodwood Estate, including care of the steam pump which brought water up from a bore-hole. The last to die in East Lavant was my severe Aunt May, who I now discover was a bit of a rebel in her youth, whose funeral I attended while I was still at college in the early 70s and whose unmarked grave I rediscovered last year thanks to a rediscovered relative, Jenny, who still lives in the area.



Since, last year, the twin crises of Brexit and Covid had laid waste to the hospitality industry, “The Partridge” (which I suspect was once run by Kezia’s brother, doing a roaring trade during Goodwood Week) in Singleton was closed for lack of staff so we walked the half-mile to Charlton to eat in “The Fox Goes Free” and liked it so much that we’ve just stayed there for another few days.


Apart from my family connections, I knew nothing of Charlton’s significant place in English culture:
- It was the site of the first organised fox-hunt, “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the inedible” as Wilde so pithily put it, which the English public, by means of fake prints and place-mats in pubs has been hoodwinked into believing a true representation of the finest this country can offer. You can learn a bit about it on the Goodwood website or look at photos of ghastly people at Tatler. I say no more, except that this grim pursuit started from “The Fox”, as it then was. Quite likely my ancestors were there. On foot.

But just across the road stands this extraordinary building, Fox Hall, which served as a Meeting Room for Ghastly People prior to their blood-drooling escapades. You can stay there; it belongs to the Landmark Trust. It is said to be “magical”.

2) Fast forward to 1915 and in the very same pub was held the very first meeting of the Women’s Institute. there’s a wooden plaque to prove it though the WI website begs to differ. At any rate, a very much more wholesome and worthwhile community and one of my forebears, though I don’t know just which “Mrs Norrell” she is, was there at the start.



3) Rewind again to the late 18th century and the 3rd Duke of Richmond was having drawn up a very excellent and accurate map, employing surveyors named Yeakell & Gardner – yes ,the very map-makers I’ve so frequently praised for their wonderful map of Sussex. I believe it was Lennox who commissioned for them a monster theodolite as big as a cart-wheel. This was at the foundation of the Ordnance Survey, which has been in one form or another at my fingertips for most of my life.
I think I’ve spent enough time on this for now. Chalkpit Lane, The Rubbin’ House, the scandal of the Lavant Caves and the wonder of the Trundle itself will have to wait.
