West Dean, West Sussex

West Dean College of Arts and Conservation is situated in the 6,350-acre (25.7 km2) West Dean Estate, of West Dean near Chichester. The Estate was formerly the home of the poet and patron of the arts Edward James. He was an avid admirer of the Surrealist movement, and formed one of the largest collections of their works during his lifetime. He inherited West Dean House and the estate after the death of his father, William Dodge James. In 1939 Edward wrote to Aldous Huxley, expressing his fear that after the war, certain arts, particularly the techniques of the craftsmen, would be lost. As a solution, James suggested that his Estate be set up as an educational community where the techniques of craftsmanship could be preserved and taught, whilst restoring old work and creating new art works. In 1964 James conveyed this Estate including West Dean House to the Edward James Foundation; in 1971 the Foundation established West Dean College as a centre for the study of conservation, arts, crafts, writing, gardening and music, providing both full-time and short courses. The Sussex Barn Gallery, Tapestry Studio and West Dean Gardens are also located on the Estate.

West Dean House is a large flint-faced manor house situated in West Dean, West Sussex, near the historic City of Chichester. This country estate has approximately 6,350 acres (25.7 km2) of land and dates back to 1086, with various royal connections throughout the years. In 1971 the Estate became the home of West Dean College, a centre of study of conservation, arts, crafts, writing, gardening, and music. West Dean is Grade II* listed on the National Heritage List for England, and its landscaped park and gardens are equally listed Grade II* on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

Singleton railway station served the village of Singleton in the county of West Sussex in England. The station was on the former line between Chichester and Midhurst. It was opened on 11 July 1881. The station, designed by T. H. Myres, was built in a grand way by its owners the London Brighton and South Coast Railway, which included four platforms, with a subway linking them and the 'Country House' style station building, buffets, long sidings for awaiting trains, a large goods shed for dealing with freight, and two signal boxes to control the station. The main reason for this large building was to deal with visitors to the Goodwood Racecourse, but passengers preferred to use Chichester Station mostly due to the walk uphill to the course from Singleton. It was one of the most visited stations by the LBSCR royal train as the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) used to 'weekend' with the James family at West Dean House. Little other traffic was ever found, and despite all of the grand hopes, passenger services were withdrawn on 6 July 1935. Freight services remained until these were withdrawn on 28 August 1953 by British Railways. The station was later in use by a vineyard owner, but is now a private residence. In March 2019, the former station was listed Grade II by Historic England.

The Weald and Downland Living Museum (known as the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum until January 2017) is an open-air museum in Singleton, West Sussex. The museum is a registered charity.The museum covers 40 acres (16 ha), with over 50 historic buildings dating from 950AD to the 19th century, along with gardens, farm animals, walks and a mill pond. The principal aim at the foundation of the museum was to establish a centre that could rescue representative examples of vernacular buildings from South East England, and thereby to generate increased public awareness and interest in the built environment. The museum principally promotes the retention of buildings on their original sites unless there is no alternative, and encourages an informed and sympathetic approach to their preservation and continuing use. The buildings at the museum were all threatened with destruction and, as it was not possible to find a way to preserve them at their original sites, they were carefully dismantled, conserved and rebuilt in their historical form at the museum. These buildings, plus two archaeological reconstructions, help the museum bring to life the homes, farmsteads and rural industries of the last 950 years. Along with the buildings, there are "hands-on" activities, like cooking, and weaving, and a number of yearly activities, including seasonal shows, historic gardens weekend and Tree Dressing.

The Weald and Downland Gridshell (2002) is a building designed by Buro Happold and Edward Cullinan Architects for the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum: it was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize in 2002. The building is a structural wooden gridshell, constructed of oak sourced from Normandy, and cladded with local cedar. Before constructing the gridshell, members of Buro Happold and the Cullinan practice-built a prototype during their own time on weekends. This was also a self-supporting gridshell, and was used as a temporary entrance canopy on the Pompidou Centre.

Singleton is a village, Anglican parish and civil parish in the Chichester district of West Sussex, England. It lies in the Lavant valley, 5 miles (8 km) miles north of Chichester on the A286 road to Midhurst. The civil parish has a land area of 1,602 hectares (3,960 acres). In the 2001 census there were 199 households containing 476 people, of whom 199 were economically active. The population marginally increased to 480 at the 2011 Census.

The Trundle is an Iron Age hillfort on St Roche's Hill about 4 miles (6 km) north of Chichester, West Sussex, England, built on the site of a causewayed enclosure, a form of early Neolithic earthwork found in northwestern Europe. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. Hillforts were built as early as 1000 BC, in the Late Bronze Age, and continued to be built through the Iron Age until shortly before the Roman occupation. A chapel dedicated to St Roche was built on the hill around the end of the 14th century; it was in ruins by 1570. A windmill and a beacon were subsequently built on the hill. The site was occasionally used as a meeting place in the post-medieval period. The hillfort is still a substantial earthwork, but the Neolithic site was unknown until 1925 when archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford obtained an aerial photograph of the Trundle, clearly showing additional structures inside the ramparts of the hillfort. Causewayed enclosures were new to archaeology at the time, with only five known by 1930, and the photograph persuaded archaeologist E. Cecil Curwen to excavate the site in 1928 and 1930. These early digs established a construction date of about 500 BC to 100 BC for the hillfort and proved the existence of the Neolithic site. In 2011, the Gathering Time project published an analysis of radiocarbon dates from almost forty British causewayed enclosures, including some from the Trundle. The conclusion was that the Neolithic part of the site was probably constructed no earlier than the mid-fourth millennium BC. A review of the site in 1995 by Alastair Oswald noted the presence of fifteen possible Iron Age house platforms within the hillfort's ramparts.

Singleton and Cocking Tunnels is a 1.9-hectare (4.7-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest between Chichester and Midhurst in West Sussex. It is also a Special Area of Conservation.These disused railway tunnels are the fifth most important sites for hibernating bats in Britain and the most important in south-east England. They are the only known location in the country for the greater mouse-eared bat. Other species include Natterer's, Daubenton's, Brandt's and brown long-eared bats.The site is private land with no public access.

West Dean Woods is a 16.3-hectare (40-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest north of West Dean in West Sussex. It is managed by the Sussex Wildlife Trust.These woods have records dating back to the sixteenth century. The ground layer is rich in flowering plants, including white helleborine, fly orchid and around two million wild daffodils. Thirty five bryophytes have been recorded and invertebrates include two rare hoverflies which live on dead wood, Cheilosa carbonaria and Cheilosa nigripes.There is no public access to the site.

Lavant is a civil parish in the Chichester district of West Sussex, England, 2.2 miles (3.5 km) north of Chichester. It includes three villages: Mid Lavant and East Lavant, which are separate Anglican parishes, and the much smaller West Lavant. It takes its name from the River Lavant which flows from East Dean to Chichester. The A286 road between Chichester and Midhurst runs through the parish. The villages were served by a station in Mid Lavant, on the railway line that ran between Chichester and Midhurst, but this closed in stages between 1931 and 1991.

Chichester North is an electoral division of West Sussex in the United Kingdom, and returns one member to sit on West Sussex County Council.

Goodwood Racecourse is a horse-racing track five miles north of Chichester, West Sussex, in England controlled by the family of the Duke of Richmond, whose seat is nearby Goodwood House. It hosts the annual Glorious Goodwood meeting in late July and early August, which is one of the highlights of the British flat racing calendar, and is home to three of the UK's 36 annual Group 1 flat races, the Sussex Stakes, the Goodwood Cup and the Nassau Stakes. Although the race meeting has become known as 'Glorious Goodwood', it is sponsored by Qatar and officially called the 'Qatar Goodwood Festival'. It is considered to enjoy an attractive setting to the north of Trundle Iron Age hill fort, which is used as an informal grandstand with views of the whole course. One problem is that its proximity to the coast means that it can get foggy. This is an unusual, complex racecourse with a straight six furlongs—the "Stewards' Cup Course"—which is uphill for the first furlong and mostly downhill thereafter. There is a tight right-handed loop at the far end of the straight on which there are starts for various longer distance courses. These include the 1 mile 2 furlongs (1m 2f) "Craven Course", the 1m 4f "Gratwicke Course" and the 1m 6f "Bentinck Course". The start for the 2m 5f "Cup Course" is quite close to the winning post—horses travel outwards on the straight, around the loop and back. Throughout the loop there are severe undulations and sharp turns. The course is used for flat racing only. From 1968 to 1970 the course's late summer meeting was shown on ITV, and from the early 2000s some races from the course occasionally appeared on Channel 4, but otherwise the course had been covered exclusively by the BBC for 50 years from 1956 (when it first appeared on television) to 2006. In 2007 the rights passed to Channel 4 Racing. Since 2017 races have been live on ITV Racing after the channel won the rights to televise horse racing from Channel 4. In the late 18th century, Goodwood became the location for the first flag start on a British racecourse, at the behest of Lord George Bentinck, after a particularly shambolic start involving jockey Sam Arnull caused by an elderly deaf starter with a speech impediment. Its primary meeting, now known as "Glorious Goodwood", was established in 1802 and the important early handicap the Goodwood Stakes was established in 1823.