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The Richmond Arms

Opening November 2010

Funtington is a pleasant rural parish of approx 6 sq. miles nestling under the Downs to the west of Chichester. The 1500 strong community is spread over the villages of Funtington, East and West Ashling and West Stoke and surrounding areas.

The northern parts of the parish fall within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The place names are Saxon. Funtington, the settlement of the dwellers by the funta or spring, Ashling or Aescelingas, the people of Aescal, Stoke or Stoc, the gathering place of stock.

We know from the archaeological evidence of Neolithic flint mines on the Downs, Bronze Age round barrows and boundaries on Bow Hill and traces of Iron Age fields, that the area has been farmed for at least three millennia.

The pre-Roman Chichester Dykes running westward through the Parish tell us that much of the area belonged to the Celtic Regni tribe in the first century BC and these settled lands probably became part of the large estate serving Fishbourne Roman Palace and later, the Saxon and Norman manors of Bosham.

Our villages were tythings of the manors of Bosham in the 1086 Domesday Book, except for West Stoke which is recorded as a separate manor under the Hundred of Benestede. There was a Church at West Stoke from the 11th Century and Funtington had its own Church by the 12th Century.

King Charles II rode past the northern boundary of the parish along what is now called the Monarch’s Way during his flight from the Battle of Worcester in 1651. It is said that the King drew rein above Kingley Vale and looking down on its beauty, exclaimed “England is surely worth fighting for”.

Three hundred years later Funtington airfield which was in operation between 1942 and 1944, played its part as a fighter dispersal station for RAE Tangmere and hosted Canadian and Norwegian squadrons in the D-Day invasion of France.