Bedham
| Bedham | |
| Sussex | |
|---|---|
 The former Bedham School | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ000219 |
| Location: | 50°59’18"N, -0°34’31"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Pulborough |
| Postcode: | RH20 |
| Dialling code: | 01798 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Chichester District |
Bedham is a hamlet in the west of Sussex, sitting in the pretty breathing space between the Weald in the north of the county and the South Downs in its south. The hamlet is to be found two and a half miles east of Petworth, embedded in the woodland coating the dip slope which rises towards the Downs.
This hamlet consists of a farm, a derelict Victorian school, and a scattering of houses, all set high on a wooded sandstone ridge of the western Weald, at 500 feet above sea level. To the west Flexham Park is an area of commercial woodland, with large areas of chestnut coppice, and south of this is a sandstone quarry at Bognor Common. To the north-east are large areas of semi-natural forest, left unmanaged as a nature reserve, called The Mens. South of The Mens is Hawkhurst Court, a country house used as a Canadian army HQ in the build-up to the Normandy Invasion during Second World War, then as a private school, before becoming private housing in the 1980s.
From the early 20th century Bedham became popular with artists of limited means who wanted to "escape from civilisation". Remote cottages could be bought for £100. The composer Sir Edward Elgar lived nearby at Brinkwells for a time as a sub-tenant of the artist Rex Vicat Cole, and the studio where Elgar composed his Cello Concerto was moved up to the village and now stands as a separate house. Ford Madox Ford, author of The Good Soldier also lived in the village with Stella Bowen, an Australian artist twenty years his junior. Later residents included Miss Ethel West (d.1950) and her companion Miss Metherell who lived in Bedham Cottage - Miss Metherell using the pen name Rhoda Leigh wrote a fictional account of the hamlet, Past and Passing: Tales from Remote Sussex, which offended some local residents with its thinly veiled and exaggerated references to them.[1] One of those offended was Mrs. Puttick who sold groceries, tobacco and sweets from the kitchen of her house opposite the lane to Warren Barn.
A more recent book by a resident, Lillian Hunt, recounts much Bedham history centred on Mants, the cottage where its author’s grandfather lived.[2]
History
In 1460 Bedham was home to William Hibberden, one of the members of Parliament for Midhurst.[3]
An agreement of 1769 between the owner of the manor, William Mitford of Pitshill at Tillington, and the tenants provided for the enclosure of common land to create woodland managed as coppice, although the areas involved are not specified.[4]
In 1981 the Royal Logistic Corps considered the area for practising helicopter insertions of freight due to the hilly wooded nature of the area. The proposal did not go through.
School
The small schoolhouse was built by local landowners and the Church of England to provide elementary education for children from the hamlet and surrounding area. Built in the style of a chapel it doubled up as the church on Sundays. The single room was divided by a curtain for infants and senior classes. At the end of the school week the chairs were turned to face the east and ink pots removed from the desks. In the 1930s services would be held there once or twice a month by the Rector of Fittleworth, with one of the local ladies playing the harmonium.[5]
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Bedham) |
References
- ↑ P Jerrome, Petworth. From 1660 to the present day. The Window Press p232
- ↑ Hunt, Lillian M.: 'Honour Thy Father' (Goldsmith Publications, 2006) ISBN 0-9552690-0-8
- ↑ Josiah Wedgwood, Anne Holt (1936). History of Parliament. HM Stationery Office. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.210096. Retrieved 18 October 2011. "Bedham Sussex."
- ↑ "Articles of Agreement". The National Archives. 1769. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/A2A/records.aspx?cat=179-q_2&cid=-1#-1.
- ↑ Jerrome, Peter (2011). Peter dead drunk. Petworth: The Window Press. pp. 24, 281.