Coates is a downland

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

in the

Chichester Chichester ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and civil parish in the Chichester District, Chichester district of West Sussex, England.OS Explorer map 120: Chichester, South Harting and Selsey Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher ...

district A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...

West Sussex West Sussex is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Surrey to the north, East Sussex to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Hampshire to the west. The largest settlement is Cr ...

, England. Coates lies one mile (1.7 km) southwest from

Fittleworth Fittleworth is a village and civil parish in the Chichester (district), District of Chichester in West Sussex, England located west from Pulborough on the A283 road and south east from Petworth. The village has an Anglican church, a primary s ...

and four miles (6.8 km) south-east-by-south from

Petworth Petworth is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Chichester (district), Chichester District of West Sussex, England. It is located at the junction of the A272 road, A272 east–west road from Heathfield, East Sussex, Heat ...

. It is within the ancient divisions of the Bury Hundred and the

Rape of Arundel The Rape of Arundel (also known as Arundel Rape) is one of the rapes, the traditional sub-divisions unique to the historic county of Sussex in England. The population of the rape of Arundel was 22,478 in 1801, falling to 24,276 in 1811. Locat ...

.The village is bounded north by the

Rother Navigation The River Rother flows from Empshott in Hampshire, England, to Stopham in West Sussex, where it joins the River Arun. At long, most of the river lies within West Sussex except for the first which lie in Hampshire. The upper river, from it ...

Coates Manor House

Coates Manor House is Elizabethan in origin and the former seat of the Coates family whose name is given to the village. It is well known for its gardens that are available for public viewing by appointment as part of the

National Gardens Scheme The National Garden Scheme opens privately owned gardens in England, Northern Ireland, Wales, and the Channel Islands on selected dates for charity. It was founded in 1927 with the aim of "opening gardens of quality, character and interest to th ...

Coates Castle

Coates Castle, a Grade-II mansion listed by

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, a battlefield, medieval castles, Roman forts, historic industrial sites, Lis ...

lies on land above the village in a position that affords extensive views across the Sussex countryside. It was built in 1820 by John King in the Strawberry Hill gothic style and was extensively renovated in the early twenty-first century after years of gradual decline. It is the place where Louisa Hamilton, Duchess of Abercorn, an ancestor of Princes William and Harry, died on 31 March 1905.(There is a memorial inside the church commemorating her life) and visitors to the house are known to have included Sir Winston Churchill and Kaiser Wilhelm. During the Second World War it was requisitioned and used by the army. It was here in 1940-41 that Lieutenant- colonel Stewart Blacker invented the Spigot Mortar or Blacker Bombard a cheap and easily produced piece of anti-tank ordnance required after the British Army's heavy equipment had been lost at Dunkirk. It was used extensively by the

Home Guard Home guard is a title given to various military organizations at various times, with the implication of an emergency or reserve force raised for local defense. The term "home guard" was first officially used in the American Civil War, starting ...

. In the fifties it was owned by the former Master of the Hursley and Hambledon Hunt Gerald Joynson who renovated it and eccentrically installed in a room a specially constructed coffin for himself.

Conservation area

Coates Castle SSSI is a

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...

. It consists of three blocks of land all within a one kilometre radius of Coates Castle which contain the only known British population of ''

Gryllus campestris ''Gryllus campestris'', the European field cricket or simply the field cricket in the British Isles, is the type species of Grylloidea, crickets in its genus and tribe Gryllini. These flightless dark colored insects are comparatively large; t ...

'', a field cricket protected under Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Coates Common and Lords Piece are areas of Sussex heathland containing breeding populations of heathland birds including Nightjar and Dartford Warbler.

St Agatha's Church

The

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

church of St Agatha is first recorded in about 1100 in the Chartulary of

Lewes Priory Lewes Priory is a part-demolished medieval Cluniac priory in Lewes, East Sussex in the United Kingdom. The ruins have been designated a Grade I listed building. History The Priory of St Pancras was the first Cluniac house in England and had ...

, stating that the Church of "Cotes" made an annual donation to the Prior. The church is of early English style and consists of a single nave now covered by a wood floor with a bellcote (rebuilt 1961) and a small square chancel. The chancel arch is plain and half circular. One Norman window has survived on the south wall. The larger windows are late 14th century and of early English lancet type. A small Sussex marble lead-lined font stands extant at the west end of the nave and constructed within the south wall of the chancel is a sedile ( pl

sedilia In church architecture, sedilia (plural of Latin ''sedīle'', "seat") are seats, typically made of stone, located on the liturgical south side of the altar—often within the chancel—intended for use by the officiating priest, deacon, an ...

) or priest's chair.The Sussex Archaeological Society: St Agatha's Church, Coates: A Short Guide Unusually the entrance to the church is on the north side presumably for the ease of the residents from the nearby manor house Coates Manor.The Registers date from 1559 and the living is linked to nearby Burton (Bodecton). Since 1982 St Agatha's has been within the parish of Barlavington and

Sutton Sutton (''south settlement'' or ''south town'' in Old English) may refer to: Places United Kingdom England In alphabetical order by county: * Sutton, Bedfordshire * Sutton, Berkshire, a List of United Kingdom locations: Stu-Sz#Su, location * S ...

and Bignor.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in West Sussex Sites of Special Scientific Interest notified in 1993 Sites of Special Scientific Interest in West Sussex