THAKEHAM Domesday church and an attempted murder This is the heart of an ancient parish, the church was listed in the Domesday survey of 1086, when herds of over 400 pigs were pastured nearby, and a retired soldier worked his land with a yoke of oxen. In 1257, near Champions Farm opposite the Abingworth Hall Hotel on the Storrington Road, the rector was brutally attacked and nearly killed by a group of men led by the rector of neighbouring West Chiltington, probably as the result of a disagreement over the church tax known as tithes. In the 1600s, Champions was owned by the Shelley family, ancestors of the Warnham-born poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. The church contains an impressive series of 16th century memorials to some of the Apsley family who lived at Thakeham Place, just to the south, and one to James Butler of Amberley Castle.