Home of the Tapsel gate, the Pyecombe Hook and an eccentric hundred-year-old village song celebrating its greatness.

 

Situated in the South Downs National Park, history is ever-present in the rural village of Pyecombe. Its name is thought to derive from the Saxon peac cumb and can be translated as the ‘valley marked by a projecting hill’. Founded well over a thousand years ago by pilgrims along the old Roman trade route that once ran between the hills, a quaint 12th-century church lies at its heart and still welcomes travellers with tea and cake. 

The village has been witness to many historical events in its time. The plague was its most notable enemy and saw the abandonment of the main site in the 17th century due to its ruin, with the townspeople moving a quarter of a mile away in an attempt to evade its deadly clutches. Though the disease eventually passed and most returned, the distance between the two settlements remains to this day. 

The Pyecombe church, its predecessor listed as Pingeden in the Domesday Book in 1086, consists of a 12th century chancel and nave, 13th century tower and 15th century now-disused bell. A Tapsel gate lies to its northern boundary. One of six that still remain in the UK today, it was designed primarily to allow for easier passage of coffin-bearers into the grounds of the church for burial. The gate features a Pyecombe Hook - a shepherd's crook designed for the more efficient catching of sheep - first created in the Old Forge, a historic building itself that still stands across the street from the church. 

Pyecombe even has its own village song commemorating the hook, obviously:

Hefty of arm, he hammered it out,

In clangour of forge and flame of fire;

Red it rolled on the anvil's bosom,

Bent and bowed to the smith's desire;

He laughed as he lifted it, laughed and sang

The song that is older than ink or pen: -

“O well I know,

Who knows no book,

Where’er you go

Is never a crook,

Can better the crooks of the Pyecombe forge,

The crooks of the Pyecombe men.”

 

There are two more verses as recorded in a 1925 edition of the Worthing Herald, attributed to a mysterious C. S. Holder. How this song may have once been sung is now lost to the past, though its spirit continues.

From its historic buildings to its breathtaking scenery, Pyecombe is a small village with big character. If you are ever passing that way - and even if you are not - it is well worth a visit!