History of Church Hill

History of Church Hill
The origins of Church Hill as a thoroughfare are lost in the annals of time. We know that there was an important Iron Age settlement on the greensand ridge, at Pulborough, prior to the arrival of the Romans in 43AD, and the inhabitants would have to have used tracks, from this settlement, to the river. Church Hill would almost certainly have been one of these tracks.

The Romans built Stane Street, from Chichester Harbour to Pulborough, shortly after their arrival. It is a matter of some debate as to where the Romans actually crossed the River Arun and whether Stane Street continued up what is now Church Hill.

Following the departure of the Romans, in the 5th century, the fortunes of the road fluctuated along with those of the river crossing. Its role diminished to a drove road to Wealden pastures in Saxon times. After the coming of the Normans, in 1066, the development of both London and Arundel required a good road link, and traffic used Stane Street as far south as the bottom of Codmore Hill. There it bore left along Broomershill Lane and went on to Wickford Bridge, Wiggonholt, and eventually up to Rackham Bank to North Stoke, where the River Arun was forded, and on to Arundel.

Pulborough remained bypassed when a bridge was built at Houghton in the early 1440s which diverted the traffic from Rackham to Arundel Park via Amberley.

Church Hill remained a local thoroughfare up to the middle of the eighteenth century and the onset of the turnpikes. Prior to the introduction of turnpikes, the maintenance of roads had been the responsibility of the parishes through which they passed and consequently their condition was generally very poor! Turnpikes were created by Acts of Parliament, which placed specified routes in the hands of trustees, who were responsible for maintaining the road and could charge tolls to travellers who used them.

Church Hill formed part of a turnpike linking Guildford to Arundel, via Newbridge, Adversane and Pulborough, which was created in 1757. Works were carried out to lower the gradient of Church Hill, at this time, including the construction of a brick wall to protect the base of the Old House. The Rev. John Austin, who was the Rector of St. Mary's, put local men to work to lower the gradient still further in 1830, when there was great unemployment after the Napoleonic Wars, and a series of disastrous harvests following the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in present-day Indonesia.

The road became more popular following the construction of the old Swan Bridge across the River Arun in 1785, and prior to the coming of the railway in 1859 a regular coach service ascended Church Hill on its way to London, via Billingshurst, when the horses would stop to take a breather at the Chequers Inn (which was then on the western side of the road) at the top of the hill.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, Church Hill was described as a poor road, with no pavement and the banks and trees coming right down to the road and some would say, there have only been marginal improvements since!

Finally, and to demonstrate that the current landslip is by no means a unique phenomenon, on a map of 1820, there was a cottage, called Woodyears three quarters of the way up the hill, on the eastern side, and an old account relates: “A cottage formerly stood here, in a rough state. The ground having fallen into the High Roadway”!