Ferring is a village,

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

and

electoral ward A ward is a local authority area, typically used for electoral purposes. In some countries, wards are usually named after neighbourhoods, thoroughfares, parishes, landmarks, geographical features and in some cases historical figures connected to ...

in the Arun District of

West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ar ...

, England. It is part of the built-up area of

Worthing Worthing () is a seaside town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 111,400 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Hov ...

and is accessed along the A259 road west of the town - comprising North Down Farm and Highdown Hill to the north and the town itself to the south, with approximately equal size green buffers to the town in size, to east to

Goring-by-Sea Goring-by-Sea, commonly referred to simply as Goring, is a neighbourhood of Worthing and former civil parish, now in Worthing district in West Sussex, England. It lies west of West Worthing, about west of Worthing town centre. Historically in ...

and west to East Preston. In the 2001 census 4361 people lived in 2179 households, of whom 1423 were economically active. The area's seafront is pedestrianised and the beach itself is a mixture of shingle and pebble, reinforced by groynes. The population at the 2011 Census was 4,480.

History

The site of the village is an ancient one: the name itself is

Saxon The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic * * * * peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...

; it is mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

; the parish church is

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

, and is dedicated to St Andrew. In the churchyard are buried the ashes of Major John Bigelow Dodge (1894-1960), veteran of the Great Escape of 1944, and there is a Commonwealth war grave of a

Royal Sussex Regiment The Royal Sussex Regiment was a line infantry regiment of the British Army that was in existence from 1881 to 1966. The regiment was formed in 1881 as part of the Childers Reforms by the amalgamation of the 35th (Royal Sussex) Regiment of Foot ...

officer of World War II.
CWGC Casualty Record. Until the 1920s the village was a small one; when the south coast began to be built-up, particularly with holiday homes, Ferring began to increase in size.

Sport and leisure

Ferring has an amateur football club, Ferring Football Club, which plays at the Glebelands. Ferring Radio was a community licensed station broadcasting across the South Coast on 97.7fm originally for the benefit and experience of clients with special needs attending Ferring Country Centre. The station has been revived in 2020 on-line to provide music and local news and information during the extreme medical crisis and isolation.

References

External links

Villages in West Sussex Arun District Populated coastal places in West Sussex {{WestSussex-geo-stub