Lurgashall, West Sussex

Noah's Ark pub, Lurgashall

Lurgashall is a small, attractive village to the north of the Sussex Downs, in the shadow of Black Down. The village is of ancient origins and dates back at least to the Roman period. The most famous resident of Lurgashall was Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who lived at Aldworth House.

The beautiful historic church of St Lawrence dates to the Saxon period and is quite large for a building of that period. The church has an unusual loggia, a kind of porch, with space for travellers to rest before services. The church is usually open to visitors.

On the village green is Noah's Ark, a charming village pub that dates to 1557. For several centuries the pub baked its own bread and brewed its own ale, which it sold around the local area. This gave rise to popular rhyme, 'For well-baked bread and home-brewed ale, you must come to Lurgashale'.

Lurgashall's 17th-century mill was pulled down in 1974 and re-erected as part of the Weald and Downland open-air museum at nearby Singleton, south of Midhurst.

Lurgashall is home to a popular winery and has its own cricket club, with matches played on the village green.

In 2022, Conde Nast Traveller magazine named Lurgashall as one of the most beautiful villages in the UK. Perhaps at odds with the idyllic beauty is the fact that Lurgashall was at the centre of the Swing Riots in 1830, a violent outbreak against the mechanisation of agriculture in Britain. Rioters destroyed threshing machines and burned hay ricks across the south-east.