Loxwood

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Loxwood
Sussex
Loxwood Street.JPG
Location
Grid reference: TQ038314
Location: 51°4’24"N, 0°31’10"W
Data
Population: 1,480
Post town: Billingshurst
Postcode: RH14
Dialling code: 01403
Local Government
Council: Chichester
Parliamentary
constituency:
Chichester
Website: http://www.loxwood.org/

Loxwood is a small village and civil parish in northern Sussex, adjacent to the border with Surrey. The Wey and Arun Canal passes to the East and South of the village. This civil parish is at the centre of an excellent network of bridleways and footpaths crossing the Low Weald and joining with those in adjacent counties. Walking to the coast and into London is entirely feasible, essentially on footpaths or bridleways.

Overview

There is a primary school, village hall, with outdoor children's playing facilities, a sports centre, an Anglican church, a Chapel, two pubs The Onslow Arms and the "Sir Roger Tichborne" at Alfold Bars, a small number of shops with a sub-Post Office in the Loxwood Village Stores, John Murray and Son's, an award winning butcher, game dealer and supplier of cheeses, cooked meats and other delicacies about a butcher's cold and cutting room supplying local pubs and restaurants and clubs, Forget-Me-Not - a florist and gift shop, Just Hair - a hairdressing business, Kennard's garage in Loxwood village, and a small car showroom and workshop at Alfold Bars.

Additionally Loxwood has an NHS medical practice with some 4 GPs, several practice Nurses, a Dispensary (rural practices), and a visiting Physiotherapist all supported by an active "Friends of Loxwood Medical Practice". Two further physiotherapist services are available in Loxwood, one based at the Loxwood Sports Association, the other on private premises.

The village was once one of the settlements greatly influenced by a small Christian sect, the Society of Dependants, also known as Cokelers who left London in the mid-1800s. They built their first chapel in the village. The sect evolved to run a Combination Store in the village, the building for which houses villages shops today.

Lawrence Durrell, the renowned author of The Alexandria Quartet, a series of interrelated novels that take as their subject matter the psychology of love and the shifting façades that human beings present to one another, lived here from 1933 to 1934, in a cottage called Chestnut Mead.[1] Durrell, along with his first wife Nancy and another young couple, George and Pam Wilkinson, left Fitzrovia to live in the countryside. It was here that Durrell, then in his early twenties, wrote what became his first published novel, Pied Piper of Lovers.[2]

Sport and leisure

Loxwood has a Non-League football club Loxwood F.C. who play at the recreation ground on Plaistow Road, and have been playing since 1920.[3]

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References

  1. Amateurs in Eden, Joanna Hodgkin, Virago 2012 ISBN 978-1-84408-793-8
  2. MacNiven, Ian, Lawrence Durrell, A Biography (Faber & Faber 1998), Pudding Island chapter
  3. "Loxwood Sports Association - Football". Loxwoodsports.org.uk. http://www.loxwoodsports.org.uk/football.html. Retrieved 2013-06-23.