Burpham and its Fort
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ส.ค. 2024
- We visit the village of Burpham in West Sussex!
Where is Burpham?
If you happen to be visiting the town of Arundel, with its impressive castle and cathedral, you might find yourself on the castle’s east side on the road that leads to South Stoke, a place I’ve covered in a previous video. Looking northeastwards, you might notice in the distance a rather interesting building. You know where you are, having checked the map. Now reading your compass you can see that the building is located on a heading of 50 degrees. With a protractor, draw a line from your location, and you see that you’re looking at the village of Burpham, and the interesting building is its church. We’ll have a closer look at that church a bit later!
On the map, Burpham, like the two Stokes, North and South, lies on the River Arun. But not right on the river, because it stands on a bluff about 13 meters or 43 feet above the Arun. It’s just 1 3/4 miles or 2.8 km from Arundel, as the crow flies. But if you drive there from Arundel, it’s 3 ¼ miles or 5.8 km, and takes about 15 minutes. Afternoon traffic on a very nice day, like the one shown here, can be a bit thick! Here we’re driving on the A27 until we get to the Crossbush Lane turnoff, and now we’re on a country road. Since Burpham is on a bit of a dead-end for normal public roads, this is the only way to get there. And you have to leave the same way you came in!
On the way you pass by the small village of Warningcamp and through the hamlet of Wepham. Wepham is part of the same civil parish as Burpham, and they are very close to one another.
It’s might be worth pointing out that there is one more Burpham in England, and that one is located in Surrey, and is a suburb of Guildford.
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I've published my book about an early subject of this channel: Bramber Castle.
Link to the book in the UK here: www.amazon.co.uk/Bramber-Cast...
Link to the book in the US here: www.amazon.com/Bramber-Castle...
Chapters:
0:00 Begin!
0:45 I am a Yank in Sussex
2:02 Looking at Burpham
2:52 Driving to Burpham
3:34 Meanings/origins of village names
5:30 Site description
7:15 History of Burpham
8:10 Archaeology
10:04 Wepham and Burpham
11:13 St. Mary Church
13:09 The George pub and restaurant
Thank you, that was very interesting and informative. You have an amazing gift of narration.
Thanks!
A very interesting and exhaustive discourse on a village known to me (I don't recall visiting it) - but then I'm merely a peasant living to the east of the county......
Thank you!
Thank you for another enjoyable and historical video 👍 love the scenery shots too, very picturesque.
I like them, too, which makes it even more fun.
Very enjoyable and detailed review of Burpham. May I suggest that you also visit Chichester Harbour which has great history and stunning beauty?
Thanks! As it happens, Chichester Harbour is on my list! 🙂
One thing you missed at the church was the grave of author and artist Mervyn Peake who wrote the Gormenghast trilogy.
Very nostalgic to see the views of the beautiful countryside that I remember from maybe forty years ago.
Drat! Thanks, and I wish I had known that when I was there!
@@SussexYank Very easy to miss if you don't know it is there, as I didn't at the time. I was just wandering around as I like to do in old graveyards and was surprised to see a name I recognized.
That was very interesting, thankyou!
Presumably, as the estuaries of rivers like the Arun, the Adur and the Ouse were once wide expanses of water reaching far inland to the castles at their head, back in Alfred’s day that spit of land at Burpham would have been a very noticeable promontory jutting out into the water?
It surely seems that way. It's clear that the Adur was an estuary back in the day, and so it seems that the Arun must have been as well. You'd get some pushback on that from older writers. A significant scholar of the late 19th and early 20th century, A. Hadrian Allcroft, was of the opinion that the Arun's flow is greater now than even back in Roman times. Problem is, there's not a lot of archaeology to confirm or contradict this.
@@SussexYank
Yes, it’s flow now must be much faster as it has been embanked, and is no longer wide, meandering and constantly changing course.
My understanding is that the castles at Arundel, Bramber and Lewes guarded the head of their respective estuaries, an indicator of the importance of seaborne trade in medieval and earlier times.
This is exactly right, and is the reason Arundel and Bramber castles are where they are, at least part of the reason they were there was to built to defend the spot where ships would load and unload or pass by on their way to and from the sea. The only reason these rivers now run in the channels they do is due to them being controlled by embankments. The Arun in particular is well known for its tendency to break its banks and flood after heavy rain, even as far up river as Pulborough. There are records of barge traffic on the Arun as far as Pallingham Quay upriver from Pulborough well into the 19th century.