IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Station Road, ARUNDEL, BN18 0BL

Formerly two company cottages of the Portsmouth and Arundel Canal, by the second and top lock up from the Arun. For many years these, and indeed the general area, were dominated by the engine house and chimney for the pump needed to supply the long and leaky summit level of the canal with water from the Arun. This building was just to the right of the cottages, but had gone by the later 19th century.

Built in 1818 originally as a pair but now converted into one house. The strip of ground between myself and the cottage should by an archeologists delight containing the line of the old Arundel-Chichester canal as well as the site of the original deserted village of Ford. The canal ran diagonally through this small field with the cottage, which housed the workers who manned one of two locks in the vicinity, lying to the north of the waterway. The wall on the left belongs to Ford church.

Originally a pair of cottages built in 1820 for the lock keeper on the Portsmouth-Arundel canal. The bump in the road and the cottage's garden indicates the route taken by the canal. Prior to the construction of the cottages no buildings stood near the church (seen at the end of the lane) the village having lost most its population and buildings by the 17th century and by 1801 only 8 houses existed in the parish as a whole. However, the coming of the canal, then railway, then airfield has increased the population. A row of houses built in 1938 along Ford Road near the current prison was to be the start of another large housing estate but war then tougher planning laws halted that growth though plans to convert the airfield into a 5000 house eco-village are currently being investigated.

Public footpath 364/1. Realignment of right of way as shown on OS explorer map. The Landranger map indicates a route across field to the south of this track.