Discovering The Delights Of… Rudgwick Village

The majority of Rudgwick village is made up of period properties, but over the years the village has increased in popularity with professionals and young families alike due to it’s good links to nearby towns and also the abundance of stunning open green spaces and countryside that surrounds it.

The village is ideally situated just 6 miles from Horsham which is a bustling market town on the upper reaches of the River Arun on the fringe of the Weald in West Sussex.

Horsham is also located just 31 miles south south-west of London, 18.5 miles north west of Brighton and 26 miles north east of the county town of Chichester, making it the perfect place to access the larger neighbouring towns for both work and leisure.

As the village has increased in popularity, new houses and developments have sprung up, however, thanks to the Rudgwick preservation society which is still very much active today, any new additions have been carefully and tastefully incorporated to ensure they mix well with the more historical and traditional style houses to create an interesting and picturesque village.

Rudgwick itself is small in terms of shops, but it has all the essentials you need – a grocery shop, post office, doctors surgery, pharmacy and a number of pubs, two schools, Pennthorpe School and Rudgwick Primary School, as well as an abundance of open green spaces and the most beautiful countryside.

As the latest Rightmove research shows, almost one third of buyers (30%) say the lockdown has made them reassess their search criteria and they now want to live in a more peaceful, rural area with access to green open spaces – with Rudgwick village you get all of this and much more!

Rudgwick also has a very quirky book swap in the form of an old telephone box! Where people can donate books for local children to borrow and read. This unusual but lovely idea sums up the community feel that comes with living in a village like Rudgwick.

Did you know… Rudgwick is home to the Rikkyo School in England, thought to be the oldest Japanese boarding school in Europe!

The village also used to have its own railway station with a line running from Horsham to Cranleigh, but it was closed in 1965 and since then the railway line has been turned into a footpath and bridleway known as the Downs Link.

The Downs Link

A 36.7 miles (59.1 km) footpath and bridleway that links the North Downs Way at St. Martha’s Hill in Surrey with the South Downs Way near Steyning in West Sussex and on via the Coastal Link to Shoreham-by-Sea.

Rudgwick may not be that well known to many, but it has its place in history – the species Polacanthus Rudgwickensis is named after a specimen discovered in the Rudgwick Brickworks, now redeveloped into housing, with the fossil fragments in the care of Horsham District Museum.

This rather random claim to fame in palaeontology therefore means Rudgwick has a small place in the history of life itself!