Blue plaque № 52114

STORRINGTON Storks and artists In 1086 the Domesday Book records Storrington as ‘Estorchestone’ a place well-known for storks. The history of Storrington has little to do with storks, and more to do with being a flourishing market place, with a fulling and tanning industry. In the early part of the 20th century it was also a centre of an artistic community. Storrington was given permission to hold a regular market from 1399, as well as a twice-yearly fair. These continued until the end of the nineteenth century. With the markets went inns and public houses, the White Horse was recorded as an inn in 1666, and the Half Moon in 1844. Rabbit breeding was also once an important local industry, and is still indicated by various place names ending in ‘warren’, signifying a place where rabbits were kept. Until the 1800s there were three working windmills and three watermills, and there was at least one earlier fulling mill down Chantry Lane. Fulling was a part of a process of preparing cloth that needed running water. At the end of the 19th century Horsham District became the home for a number of Roman Catholic orders forced to flee persecution in France. At Storrington the White Canons built a priory. This became the home for a number of artists including the poet Francis Thompson (1859-1907) who spent two years trying to beat opium addiction, and Hilaire Belloc who stayed there in 1906. The area attracted Wilfred Meynell, the poet and writer, as well as Arthur Bell (1875-1918) the disabled poet. Bell lies buried in the churchyard, his headstone was carved by the then up and coming sculptor Eric Gill. Sir Arnold Bax, the composer lived at Storrington until his death in 1953. At nearby Sullington lived the writer A J Cronin and various artists including Edwin Harris, some of whose watercolours can be seen at Horsham Museum.

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