Pulborough. Pulla’s hill and coaching inns'. In front of you is the lush floodplain of the Arun abundant with fish and wildfowl, one of the main reasons Pulborough has been settled for over 200,000 years. The evidence for these early settlers are the flint tools that they left behind and locally found examples can be seen at Horsham Museum. Roman settlements lie under modern day Pulborough, and appeared at the junction of Stane Street, the road that linked London to Chichester, with the Roman road from Barcombe east of Lewes. It was the Saxons, who followed the Romans, which gave Pulborough its name meaning Pulla’s hill or the hill by the pool. By the time the Domesday Book was written in 1086 there were 2 churches, 2 mills and 100 households rich enough to be recorded. The early settlement was built around the parish church, and two manor house sites can be seen at Old Place, now an empty moated site and New Place where part of a medieval building still survives. As you walk or drive down the hill into Pulborough you will be following the shift of the village’s focus, as by 1600 it was strung out along Lower Street away from the parish church. This shift increased with the construction of a new bridge across the Arun in 1785, the opening of the Arundel to Petworth turnpike in 1803, and the railway station in 1859. Pulborough apart from being a suitable coaching stop at inns like the old Swan, between London and Chichester, was also a centre for the local leather industry. Whilst Pot Lane that now lies on Pot Common was probably the site of a local pottery.

Old Rectory Lane, Pulborough, United Kingdom