Compton to Telegraph Hill

Download the trail guide PDF here

Navigate via page links below

• Compton Square
• Village shop and tea room
• Coach and Horses pub
• Compton Village
• St Mary church Compton
• Telegraph Hill
• Bevis’s Thumb

Compton Square

Compton is a small village but with a very rich history and heritage.

Nestled in a shallow valley between high chalk downs, with Telegraph Hill (160m) to the east and Compton Down (171m) to the west, this beautiful, unspoiled part of West Sussex is surrounded by farmland and beechwoods.

The Square is the centre of Compton village life and has always been the place where the village comes together to mark important local and national events. The Square also contains the old village well, refurbished in 2000.

• Get to Compton on the 54 bus or the Bourne Bus on Wednesday mornings.
• See the 54 bus and Bourne Bus timetables – click here

It was in The Square that the village celebrated VE Day at the end of World War II on May 8^th 1945. One resident said, ‘that night the square was alight with blazing torches and the dancing went on until the early hours’.

Did you know?

When Compton marked the VE Day 75^th anniversary there was a real contrast, as it was during lockdown in the Covid pandemic. Everyone had to celebrate at a safe social distance from each other to sing ‘We’ll Meet Again’!

Morris Men with their country music, bells and bright costumes still dance in Compton Square, just as the Sussex Tipteerers (or Mummers) did around Christmas. Dressed up in costumes covered in coloured strips of rags and ribbons, the 1910 photo of the Compton Tipteerers above shows six dressed actors and the narrator, who also played along with music on an accordion.

• See what was in a Compton Tipteerer play from the early 1900s – click here
• Read more about the groups of Sussex Mummers – click here

The square is still the venue for the annual Compton Square Dance held in June or July. The square is fenced off from the road, straw bales set out as seats, bands like the one above play country music, the BBQ is lit and the village dances. It’s great fun, so keep an eye out for the next one and come along.

• Come to the August Compton Festival with 2 days of music, food and ale – click here

Village shop and tea room

The village shop, pub, local school and church are at the heart of Compton village life. A century ago, Compton also had a butcher’s shop, near today’s vicarage, and two village shops. One was at the north end, near what was the village green and pond, and is now a private house. Get the latest Octagon Walks booklet from Octagon churches or the recently refurbished Compton village shop and tea room.

Did you know?

Known by the villagers as ‘Cobbys’, a century ago the village shop in the square was more of a general store, selling everything from boots, clothes, and lino to home-cured bacon. It also baked its own bread, sold sweets and even cream made from its own dairy cows!

Coach and Horses pub

This walker and dog friendly country pub was originally a coaching inn in the 1660s. It is in the process of change of ownership as of 2025.

Compton Village

There has been a settlement here since Saxon times but, after the Roman retreat from the British Isles in AD 410, waves of Germanic peoples crossed the sea from mainland Europe to settle and farm this area. These included the Jute people to the west in Hampshire, and Saxons to the east in Sussex.

Did you know?

English place names are often related to the original people that founded the settlement and can come from the local landscape, animals, vegetation or work or social activities. Compton’s name has an obvious reminder of its Saxon origins. Translated from Old English ’Cum’ means valley and ‘Tun’ an enclosure or settlement. Hence ‘Cumton’.

Today Compton is a small rural community but, in Saxon times, it assumed a far greater importance. Not only did the ‘Cumton’ estate feature in the will of King Alfred the Great (AD 873-888) but it also passed down to Godwin Earl of Wessex, who inherited it in AD 1014.

Did you know?

Godwin was a powerful Anglo-Saxon nobleman, father of Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. Harold lost his kingdom to William Duke of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, a data most people know from history books!

There is an Anglo-Saxon cemetery slightly to the east of Telegraph Hill on the summit of Apple Down (174m). Archaeological excavation in the 1980s, followed by DNA analysis of buried remains, revealed graves covering the whole of the Saxon period from AD 410 to 1066. These graves included pagan migrants, those calling themselves pagan but born and bred in the local are. There were also those who were locals but had adopted Christianity, popular since 400AD, so were buried in an east-west orientation.

St Mary church Compton

St Mary’s Compton is part of the Octagon Parish, made up of eight small downland churches noted for their spiritual peace and tranquillity.

The earliest mention of a priest and church in Compton is in the Domesday Book of 1086. In this huge survey of every town, village and estate across England, the Norman King William ordered locals to provide extensive details about their land holdings, property, workers and livestock.

In 1086, the Domesday Book recorded Earl Godwin as Compton’s ‘overlord’. The village listed 18 villagers, five smallholders, four slaves and one priest. Village resources were ten ploughlands worked by one Lord’s plough team and five men’s plough teams and the church.

Did you know?

The Domesday Book provided a unique snapshot of who owned what in Saxon England just after the Norman Conquest of 1066. However, the likely reason King William created the book was so he had a suitable record for future taxation of his Saxon subjects!

At the time of the Norman Conquest the original Saxon church was likely built of wattle and daub, following a simple two-celled layout typical of the early Celtic church, with a chancel and nave. 

Did you know?

Wattle and daub is a composite building method used for making walls and buildings. A woven lattice of wooden strips called ‘wattle’ is ‘daubed’ with a sticky material usually made of wet soil, clay, sand, straw and animal dung!

Nothing remains of the original Saxon church exist today. That’s because, in 1848, the subsequent medieval church became too small for the growing village and was also in a poor state of repair. A committee was set up to oversee the ‘taking down, altering, rebuilding and enlarging certain parts of the church’. Work on the much-needed major restoration started in 1849.

What you see today at St Mary is mostly the result of the Victorian ‘improvements’. However, if you look closely, there are still reminders of its more ancient past. The 11th century north walls incorporate a blocked late C12th north arcade, there is a C12th pointed chancel arch, C13th south aisle and a C15th trefoil headed piscina and plain octagonal font.

• St Mary Compton – Parish Giving Scheme
• W3W: ///ruler.pillow.hazel
• Postcode: PO18 9HB
• See the 16 page Octagon Walks Booklet – click here

Telegraph Hill

Telegraph Hill is named after the semaphore station built in 1821 on the tall hill west of Compton. The semaphore station idea was conceived by Admiral Sir Home Riggs Popham and commissioned by the Admiralty in London, to speed up Navy communication between London and Portsmouth.

It was built as the 12th in a line of 15 semaphore stations to link London to the important navel dockyard in Portsmouth, with towers positioned on high ground within sight of each other.

The 30 foot high semaphore system used two pairs of four foot wooden arms inside a vertical post. The two arms could be placed in 36 different positions to create letters A to Z and numbers 0-9, positioned using a hand wheel inside the station below.

The Navy duty officer in each tower watched neighbouring towers to check for messages though a viewing window, using a telescope. They then transmitted the important Navy messages back up and down the semaphore tower line.

Did you know?

Until 1821 Navy messages were sent as mail on horse drawn stage coaches, taking 9 hours to get a message from London to Portsmouth. Even the fastest horse and rider took 5 hours for urgent Navy messages. Popham’s tower and arm system cut London to Portsmouth communication to between 1 and 15 minutes, depending on weather conditions!

The system operated from 1822 until 1847, when it became obsolete following development of local railway lines and electric telegraph lines installed between London and Portsmouth. The only reminder of this simple amazing invention is Telegraph House, a private house built on the site of the old semaphore station. A fully working semaphore station has been restored by the Landmark Trust at Chatley Heath.

If you like fine walks, then head from Compton Square up to the good views from Telegraph Hill. The 3 mile walk takes about an hour and is one of eight in the Octagon Walks Booklet. At the top of the down you will pass the entrance to Telegraph House. A few yards on after the house along on the field edge, you should clearly see the top of Apple Down where the Anglo-Saxon Cemetery was located. Follow the track downhill and you will see a long grass-covered mound near the roadside hedge, the long barrow called Bevis’s Thumb.

• Read about the restored semaphore tower at Chatley Heath – click here

Bevis’s Thumb

Bevis’s Thumb is a Late Neolithic Long Barrow and, whilst there are around 300 earthen long barrows across Britain, this is one of very few in Sussex. It is a Scheduled Monument and a nationally important historical site.

Did you know?

Bevis was one of the legendary Sussex Giants and was supposed to be tall enough to walk across The Solent without having to swim!

Around 60m long the long barrow tapers slightly and is 14m at its widest. It now stands 1.8 m above the surrounding ground, but would originally have been surrounded by wide flanking ditches, now no longer visible. 1980 excavations showed the ditch on the south west side survived to a depth of 1.4 m and spanned 7 m from side to side, making the gentle grass-covered mound you see today much more prominently visible when originally built.

The 1980 excavation also recovered flint tools, animal bones and charcoal. Radiocarbon dating indicated it was built between 2500 – 2700 BC, placing it towards the end of the Early and Middle Neolithic Period (4,000 – 2,900 BC).

Did you know?

Bevis’s Thumb was built when the Egyptians started to build the first pyramids, 3,000 years before the first Saxon migrants arrived. So it is very ancient indeed!

The Neolithic period saw a remarkable transformation in how people lived across Europe and Britain, changing from being hunter-gatherers after the last Ice-Age to orderly agricultural production in small settled communities. It was also a period when new ideas and domesticated plants and animals arrived via Europe from the Levant in the Middle East. Neolithic farmers began to clear forests, plant early varieties of wheat and adopt a more stable, relaxed and less migratory way of life.

We don’t know where the small community of Neolithic farmers who built Bevis’s Thumb lived, but this earthen long barrow is where they buried their dead. Rather than being a burial chamber for a single leader, it was a collective community burial site.

To understand more of how Neolithic farmers might have lived take a short drive from Compton along the Idsworth road to Chalton and see replicas of some of their mud and timber dwellings at Butser Ancient Farm. You can find reconstructed examples of Neolithic huts as well as Horton House, a large Neolithic house excavated in Berkshire and dated to 3,800BC.

• See the Butser Ancient Farm website and latest events – click here
• Download or print the 16 page Octagon Walks Booklet – click here