Poynings
Poynings is a village and civil parish in the Mid Sussex District of West Sussex, England. The parish lies wholly with the South Downs National Park. To its south is Brighton and Hove, to its west is Fulking parish, to its east is Newtimber parish and to its north is Albourne parish. The planning authority for Poynings is the South Downs National Park Authority, the statutory planning authority for the National Park area.
The village is located on the north side of the South Downs near Devil's Dyke, five miles north-west of Brighton. The civil parish covers an area of and had a population of 287 at the 2001 census, including Newtimber, increasing to 432 at the 2011 census. The area was known as "Puningas" in 960 AD. Some have suggested the name came from "sons of Puna" or "people of Puna", Puna being the nickname of a hammer-wielding Saxon leader. Others have suggested it means "the people of the pond".
The downland scarp, which includes the Fulking and Perching bostals, is part of the Beeding Hill to Newtimber Hill designated Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Listed Buildings and Scheduled Monuments
Poynings civil parish contains ten listed buildings. Of these, one is Grade I and the remaining nine are Grade II. The parish contains four scheduled monuments.Listed buildings
Grade I listed buildings
- The Parish Church of the Holy Trinity – see above.
Scheduled monuments
- Bowl barrow on Scabes Castle, lying on the parish boundary between Poynings and Fulking, an originally circular funerary monument, now a roughly oval mound, having been levelled by modern ploughing on its eastern side.
- Devil's Dyke hillfort, a large univallate hillfort dating to the Iron Age, situated on a chalk spur which forms part of the Sussex Downs.
- Post-medieval stock enclosure at Devil's Dyke, which survives as a north east-south west aligned, rectangular earthwork. It was used for the stalling of working oxen and as winter housing for fatstock cattle. Before excavation in 1908, it was assumed to be a burial mound.
- Romano-British farmstead 480m north west of Devil's Dyke Cottages, which survives largely in buried form and is visible as an area of hollows and uneven ground.
Notable buildings and areas
Holy Trinity Church
Holy Trinity Church is Poynings’ parish church, located at the east end of the village, on The Street.. The church is in the Church of England Diocese of Chichester, Archdeaconry of Horsham.The church is a Grade I listed building, described in the National Heritage List for England as 'One of the finest village medieval churches in Sussex'.
The church was in the Domesday book but it was rebuilt by the de Poynings family in 1370. Its similarity to Alfriston church have left some people speculating that it had the same master mason architect. The church has an echoing empty interior and scant signs of the wealth of the donor family. There are only the smallest fragments of fourteenth century glass surviving in the plain glass windows. With its big, centralised, empty interior it has been noted that it feels more like a grand old mosque than the usual homely busy-ness of many medieval parish churches.
Cora's Corner
In the village opposite Holy Trinity Church there is a small sheltered memorial called Cora's Corner, which pays tribute to a former resident of Poynings; two benches in the shelter, Judy's Seat and Merrilee's Seat, are tributes to Cora's two daughters. The road linking Cora's Corner to the Royal Oak is called Cora's Walk.The Poynings Crossways Woods
Within the parish of Poynings there are three ancient woods, which include Park, Stonestaples and Pondtail Wood. In the neighbouring parishes there are others which are part of the Poynings Crossways Woods' cluster. These include Shaves Wood, Holmbush Wood, West Wood, East Wood and Newtimber Wood. Except Stonestaple which sits on Weald Clay, the woods all sit on Gault Clay and are all extremely biodiverse, containing many different ancient woodland indicator plants including anemones, primroses, bluebells and wild orchids. In Holmbush Wood there is still a population of scarce and fairy-like giant lacewing.Unfortunately, as many areas of the natural world, the woods are under constant threat from development and have lost many of their most precious species. The woods were once famous for their moths and butterflies, including wood white, high brown fritillary, black-veined white and the Duke of Burgundy. Change in land management means none of them live there now. The last Duke of Burgundy butterfly was seen in 1985 when a good proportion of Shaves Wood was bulldozed for pasture. Small pearl-bordered and pearl-bordered were also lost. In 2016 a new owner illegally felled hundreds of tree in Pondtail Wood before being ordered to stop by the council. The wood has since been sold to a more responsible owner in 2017.
Stonestaples Wood
Stonestaples Wood is in the centre of the Poynings parish. It is the only one of the Poynings Crossways woods that sits on the Wealden Clay. It must have once joined to the other woods, but the intervening ground to its east is fertile Lower Greensand, and so was farmed and ploughed centuries ago. The wood is rich in fungi, often colourful, and has big old hornbeam stools under an ash canopy, over anemones, primroses, bluebells and orchids. In the centre of the wood is a paintballing location.Park Wood
Park Wood is to the east of the parish and next to Newtimber Wood. In medieval times formed part of the de Poynings family deer park, and may have been much more open. The ancient deer park bank forms a prominent boundary between Park and Newtimber Wood. After that, it was likely managed as coppice with standards until the last century, when much of it was coniferised, particularly with cypress. The northern section partly retains its hornbeam coppice structure, over plentiful bluebells and is botanically rich. It is used as a scout camp.. The wood is currently being split and sold into fragments for large sums to new private owners, in a controversial process known as 'woodlotting'.Pondtail Wood
Pondtail Wood is at the north of the parish and is attached to Shaves Wood in the neighbouring parish of Albourne. The wood has a mixture of intact hazel coppice with very tall, clean oak standards at its east end, and heavy pine planting elsewhere. There may be as many as twenty three woodland indicator plants in the area. In 2016, the wood was sold to a new owner who started to bulldoze part of the centre of the wood and laid hardcore upon it, despite the binding legal requirements for permission for such felling. Demonstrators marched to the site, and several intrepid campaigners worked all one night to lift some of the hard core and dump it at the site entrance. The council intervened and the owner fined. There is now a new owner who is committed to the wood's restoration.Scarp and downland
To the south of Poynings is the scarp. On the eastern base of slope is an old hazel coppice and spring bluebells.There are a number of ancient bostal paths going up the scarp. The most varied and interesting route is The Bostal Road, a bridlepath, which curves through the woods and at its top passes the Iron Age ramparts above the Dyke Valley. The Wickhurst Bostal starts at Wickhurst Barns, passes a tiny chalk quarry with a Victorian limekiln still intact, and tops at the junction with another bostal down to Fulking. Another path, which was called the Butter Track two centuries ago, takes you steeply up the scarp to the Dyke Pub.
The ancient terrace way that tracks down and across the south slope of the Dyke Valley is probably part of the Roman route starting at Southwick, on the coast, and joining the Roman road now called the Greensand Way south of Hurstpierpoint.
The Devil's Dyke Farm's barns and cottages were built around 1950 and are the very last generation of farm buildings to be built with relatively traditional uses and proportions.