Middleton House in Steels Lane Chidham is a handsome, 5-bay Georgian farmhouse faced in grey headers with red brick around the windows.
Middleton House is listed Grade II* with Historic England and was built in 1759 as a farmhouse to Middleton Farm, the yard and barns of which were located to its north.
Did you know?
The name ‘Middleton’ derives from the old hamlets of Easton, Middleton and Weston.
The house has many notable features including a portico with fluted Tuscan columns and a doorway with six moulded panels. There is a semi-circular fanlight above the door with Chinese Chippendale tracery. Whilst architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described it as being one of a ‘type fairly common near the Selsey Peninsula,’ it is an exceptionally well-preserved and presented example of an 18th Century farmhouse.
Perhaps surprisingly for such a grand looking building, local records show that the only residents in 1881 were a farm labourer James Phillimore, together with his wife and daughter. By 1891 a local grocer William Wells was living there with his wife, married daughter and granddaughter. In 1901, James Philmore returned to the house and by 1911 it was occupied by Fanny Jane Merrett, a 55 year-old spinster. She was in charge of a dairy for a local farmer, together with her nephew, who was the manager of the dairy.
The barns have now been converted and redeveloped for residential accommodation.
Did you know?
Chidham peninsula has been farmed since the last Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago and the highly indented coastline around Chichester Harbour has been a constant feature. Although the ice never reached as far south as West Sussex, its proximity had a profound effect, as the huge volume of water locked up in ice sheets around the world dramatically reduced sea levels. Even recently, during the Iron Age (500 BC) and Roman occupation of England (43 to 410 AD), sea levels were 1 to 2 metres lower than now.