OS grid reference TQ038176 | Sovereign state United Kingdom Postcode district RH20 1 UK parliament constituency Arundel and South Downs | |
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Hardham is a small village in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England. It is on the A29 road 1.2 miles (2 km) southwest of Pulborough. At the 2011 Census the population was included in the civil parish of Coldwaltham
Contents
Map of Hardham, Pulborough, UK
Archaeology
The village is on the line of Stane Street Roman road, which changes direction here, leaving the modern A29 road which has followed it from Capel, to head south west to Bignor and Chichester. The Sussex Greensand Way from Lewes joined Stane Street here and remains of a Roman way station or mansio have been found.
Parish church
The Church of England parish church or St Botolph has some of the oldest surviving wall paintings in the country, including an image of Saint George at the Siege of Antioch in AD 1097.
The paintings date from the early 12th century. They survived by being covered by plaster until uncovered in 1866.
The painters used colours made from locally available materials — red and yellow ochre, lime white, carbon black and a green from copper carbonate.
The paintings are in two tiers on each wall and originally had inscriptions describing the scenes above them. One if these can still be seen on the east wall of the nave.
The themes of the paintings are Adam and Eve, the life of Christ, the Judgment and the Apocalypse, and the Labours of the Months.
Economic and social history
On higher ground on the south side of the village are the remains of Hardham Priory, the Priory of St. Cross, which was an Augustinian monastery established in the middle of the 13th century.
In the late 18th century a canal tunnel was built on the Arun Navigation to avoid a large loop of the River Arun. The railway line from Pulborough to Midhurst passed over the tunnel, and when the canal closed the railway company broke into the tunnel and filled that part of it under the rails with chalk.