Coates, Sussex
| Coates | |
| Sussex | |
|---|---|
 Church of St. Agatha | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SU998179 |
| Location: | 50°57’8"N, -0°34’46"W |
| Data | |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Chichester |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Horsham |
Coates is a downland village in Sussex, a mile south-west of Fittleworth and four miles south of Petworth, in the county's Bury Hundred in the Rape of Arundel. The village is bounded north by the Rother Navigation.
Coates Manor House
Coates Manor House is Elizabethan in origin and the former seat of the Coates family whose name is given to the village. It is well known for its gardens that are available for public viewing by appointment as part of the National Gardens Scheme.[1]
Coates Castle
Coates Castle is a Grade II listed mansion standing above the village in a position that affords extensive views across the Sussex countryside. It was built in 1820 by John King in the Strawberry Hill gothic style and was extensively renovated in the early twenty-first century after years of gradual decline. It is the place where Louisa Hamilton, Duchess of Abercorn died on 31 March 1905, and a memorial inside the church commemorates her life. Visitors to the house are known to have included Sir Winston Churchill and Kaiser Wilhelm II.
During the Second First World War, the house was requisitioned and used by the army. It was here in 1940-41 that Lieutenant- colonel Stewart Blacker invented the Spigot Mortar or Blacker Bombard a cheap and easily produced piece of anti-tank ordnance required after the Army's heavy equipment had been lost at Dunkirk. It was deployed extensively to the Home Guard.[2]
In the fifties the house was owned by the former Master of the Hursley and Hambledon Hunt Gerald Joynson who renovated it and eccentrically installed in a room a specially constructed coffin for himself.[3]
Conservation area
'Coates Castle SSSI' is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It consists of three blocks of land all within a radius of a thousand yards of Coates Castle, which contain the only known British population of Gryllus campestris, a field cricket which is protected species.[4]
Coates Common and Lords Piece are areas of Sussex heathland containing breeding populations of heathland birds including Nightjar and Dartford Warbler.[5]
St Agatha's Church
The parish church, St Agatha ,is first recorded in about 1100 in the Chartulary of Lewes Priory, stating that the Church of "Cotes" made an annual donation to the Prior.
The church is of early English style and consists of a single nave now covered by a wood floor with a bellcote (rebuilt 1961) and a small square chancel. The chancel arch is plain and half circular. One Norman window has survived on the south wall. The larger windows are late 14th century and of early English lancet type. A small Sussex marble lead-lined font stands extant at the west end of the nave[6] and constructed within the south wall of the chancel is a sedile or priest's chair.[7] Unusually the entrance to the church is on the north side presumably for the ease of the residents from the nearby manor house Coates Manor.[7]The Registers date from 1559 [7] and the living is linked to nearby Burton (Bodecton). Since 1982 St Agatha's has been within the parish of Barlavington and Sutton and Bignor.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Coates, Sussex) |
References
- ↑ Coates Manor Template:Webarchive
- ↑ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Latham Valentine Stewart Blacker (1887–1964), Stuart Macrae, rev., first published Sept 2004, 770 words
- ↑ The Sussex Argus 2 January 2004
- ↑ SSSI listing and designation for Coates Castle
- ↑ Sussex Ornithological Society June 2007
- ↑ André, J. Lewis (1901). "Fonts in Sussex Churches". Sussex Archaeological Collections 44: 35, drawing of font. doi:10.5284/1085602.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 The Sussex Archaeological Society: St Agatha's Church, Coates: A Short Guide