Ford is a village and

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 ...

in the

Arun District Arun is a local government district in West Sussex, England. It contains the towns of Arundel, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, and takes its name from the River Arun, which runs through the centre of the district."Arun" in ''The New Encyclo ...

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 ...

, England. It is centred south by south-west of

Arundel Arundel ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the Arun District of the South Downs, West Sussex, England. The much-conserved town has a medieval castle and Roman Catholic cathedral. Arundel has a museum and comes second behind much larg ...

and west 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 Ho ...

. The civil parish very gently slopes to the east, where it has the public track alongside the

River Arun The River Arun () is a river in the English county of West Sussex. At long, it is the longest river entirely in Sussex and one of the longest starting in Sussex after the River Medway, River Wey and River Mole. From the series of small strea ...

and the land is low but well-drained at 2 to 7 metres above

Ordnance Datum In the British Isles, an ordnance datum or OD is a vertical datum used by an ordnance survey as the basis for deriving altitudes on maps. A spot height may be expressed as AOD for "above ordnance datum". Usually mean sea level (MSL) is used ...

(sea level). The parish includes HM Prison Ford, otherwise known as Ford Open Prison centred on the site of two former government installations, the RAF Ford

Battle of Britain The Battle of Britain, also known as the Air Battle for England (german: die Luftschlacht um England), was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy defende ...

airfield and the

Royal Naval Air Station The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy and is responsible for the delivery of naval air power both from land and at sea. The Fleet Air Arm operates the F-35 Lightning II for maritime strike, the AW159 Wi ...

''HMS Peregrine''. These have a small commemorative garden, Rollaston Park, along the road of the same name.

Ford railway station Ford railway station is a railway station in Ford, West Sussex, England. It is located on the West Coastway Line which runs between Brighton and Southampton and it is down the line from via . The station and the trains serving it are operate ...

is on the West Coastway Line which has the

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

and pub next to it on semi-rural Arundel Road. Some larger units of Rudford Industrial estate are in the south of the parish.

Amenities

The ''Arundel Arms'' next to the station is on the Arundel Road and is listed in the starting category of the national grading scheme, at Grade II.

Parish church

The

Church of England parish church A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...

of Saint Andrew-by-the-Ford is near the

, surrounded by a walled churchyard entered through a wrought iron gate. The

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 ...

church was built in about 1040, and substantially rebuilt by the

Normans The Normans ( Norman: ''Normaunds''; french: Normands; la, Nortmanni/Normanni) were a population arising in the medieval Duchy of Normandy from the intermingling between Norse Viking settlers and indigenous West Franks and Gallo-Romans. ...

with a surviving early 12th-century Norman

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. ...

arch with carved decoration. There are Saxon and Norman lancet windows in the north wall of the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-typ ...

, which survives from the original building. Over a north door in this wall, which leads to a vestry, there are fragments of Anglo-Saxon

interlaced Interlaced video (also known as interlaced scan) is a technique for doubling the perceived frame rate of a video display without consuming extra bandwidth. The interlaced signal contains two fields of a video frame captured consecutively. This ...

carving. The

Decorated Gothic English Gothic is an architectural style that flourished from the late 12th until the mid-17th century. The style was most prominently used in the construction of cathedrals and churches. Gothic architecture's defining features are pointed ar ...

east window dates from about 1320 and the

Perpendicular Gothic Perpendicular Gothic (also Perpendicular, Rectilinear, or Third Pointed) architecture was the third and final style of English Gothic architecture developed in the Kingdom of England during the Late Middle Ages, typified by large windows, four-c ...

west window dates from about 1420. The brick-built Jacobean south porch is from about 1640 and has a

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedim ...

Dutch gable A Dutch gable or Flemish gable is a gable whose sides have a shape made up of one or more curves and has a pediment at the top. The gable may be an entirely decorative projection above a flat section of roof line, or may be the termination of a ...

. The wooden bell-turret, painted white as a navigational landmark for ships, has two bells, the smaller of which was

cast Cast may refer to: Music * Cast (band), an English alternative rock band * Cast (Mexican band), a progressive Mexican rock band * The Cast, a Scottish musical duo: Mairi Campbell and Dave Francis * ''Cast'', a 2012 album by Trespassers William ...

by Robert Rider, who is known to have worked 1351 and 1386. The font, carved from a square limestone block, may be Saxon or Norman and stands on a modern

Bath Stone Bath Stone is an oolitic limestone comprising granular fragments of calcium carbonate. Originally obtained from the Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines under Combe Down, Somerset, England. Its honey colouring gives the World Heritage City of ...

plinth. The building is listed in the highest category of the national grading system at Grade I.

"Eco-town" proposal

In 2008 Ford was shortlisted on the government's " Eco Town" plan. The Government earmarked its airfield site as a proposed core of a new settlement in the sub-regional county plan copied over into the draft

South East England South East England is one of the nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. It consists of the counties of Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Berkshi ...

Regional Spatial Strategy. In a public consultation to Arun District Council's core strategy issues and options, as part of the new local development framework, Ford was one of thirteen suggested locations, across the UK, for a new settlement. Arun District Council held an inquiry in 2009 into suitability as a main component of its public consultation. Following a significant and vocal local campaign, citing a large number of adverse factors, the government has abandoned plans for a substantial urban settlement here.

References

External links

Ford
{{authority control Arun District Civil parishes in West Sussex Eco-towns Villages in West Sussex