Felpham is described in Wikipedia as “…a village and civil parish in the Arun District of West Sussex, England. Although sometimes considered part of the urban area of greater Bognor Regis, it is a village and civil parish in its own right, having an area of 4.26 km² with a population of 9,611 people that is still growing.”

The village of Felpham is found between the main road to Littlehampton and the sea. It is separated from Bognor Regis by a Butlins holiday camp which stands on former meadowland drained by the Lidsey Rife. Limmer Lane connects Felpham and Middleton-on-Sea. The village is small, gathered around the Fox Inn. Whitewashed Victorian terraces, high pebble walls on grassy banks, allotments, flint-built houses with deep front gardens, double-glazed bungalows with back gates opening onto the promenade.

In the Summer of 1800, William Blake and his wife Catherine left Lambeth for the “Vale of Felpham” at a time of vicious bread riots in London. They rented a cottage from the former landlord of the Fox Inn. Shortly after his arrival, Blake wrote to a friend, ‘Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapors; voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, & their forms more distinctly seen…”

The long Downsview Road with terraced garden gates, mansard roofs with dormer windows, speedbumps, bungalows, and an occasional Art Deco rounded window, leads to a golf course, built in the 1920s, at Golf Links Road. Beyond is the new Felpham Relief Road. Much of this land is already built on or laid out for building. The new roads in those meandering estates already muddy with track marks. Waterlogged fields and the South Downs can just be seen from the golf club carpark. Blake walked frequently and recorded “…the sweet air and the voices of winds, trees and birds, and the odors of the happy ground, makes it a dwelling for immortals”.

Blake’s cottage is in what is known today as Blakes Road. Before the patched tarmac, sailing club, tennis courts, promenade café with outside seating, and mini golf with pale blue kiosk; Blake could walk through corn fields to the beach. Almost like a child, he was entranced by the “shifting lights of the sea.” For someone who had seen visions of prophets and angels in his youth, he succumbed to the simple enchantment of the coast.

Back