Drungewick Manor, Loxwood (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Drungewyk

In the civil parish of Loxwood.
In the historic county of Sussex.
Modern Authority of West Sussex.
1974 county of West Sussex.
Medieval County of Sussex (Rape of Arundel).

OS Map Grid Reference: TQ06183065
Latitude 51.06538° Longitude -0.48605°

Drungewick Manor, Loxwood has been described as a certain Palace, and also as a probable Fortified Manor House.

There are cropmark/slight earthwork remains.

This site is a scheduled monument protected by law.
This is a Grade 2 listed building protected by law*.

Description

The Bishops of Chichester had a manor here, but from the C17-C19 the house was occupied by the Onslow family. The east gable has the date 1559 in it and the house is an irregular-shaped timber-framed building, restored and enlarged in the C19 and since. Most of the moat of the old fortified house survives. (Listed Building Report)

Drungewick Manor moated site survives well with large areas of the island remaining undisturbed. The waterlogged nature of the moat provides conditions for the preservation of organic remains relating to the economy of the site's inhabitants and the landscape in which they lived.
The monument includes a large moated site situated in a low-lying area to the south of the River Arun. The site has a roughly rectangular island, aligned NW-SE, surrounded by a partially waterfilled moat. The island measures c.220m by c.130m and contains the remains of a 13th-century house and chapel known from documentary sources to have been built on the island. The buried foundations of the chapel lie c.80m to the east of the present house, which itself marks the probable location of the original house. Around the southern edge of the island is a bank up to 12m wide and 2m high. The western corner of the surrounding moat is no longer visible at ground level, having been deliberately infilled, but survives as a buried feature. Elsewhere the moat is still visible and measures between 7m and 13m wide and at its deepest point is c.4.5m deep. The northern arm, the southern section of the eastern arm, part of the southern arm and the visible part of the western arm are waterfilled. A causeway situated across the eastern arm of the moat may be an original access to the island. On the outer side of the southern arm is a bank believed to be constructed from the dredged silts of the moat. Drungewick originally belonged to the cell of the Norman Abbey of Seez in Arundel and in 1256 passed to John de Clymping, fourteenth Bishop of Chichester, who built a house and chapel on the site. (Scheduling Report)

A Royal licence to crenellate was granted in 1447 Oct 28 (Click on the date for details of this licence.).

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Scheduled Monument Number 1008049, Legacy Scheduled Monument Number 20017
National Heritage List for England Listed Building number(s) 1239800
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 393515.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) MWS3715.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- CastleUK.net
Books
- Thompson, M.W., 1998, Medieval bishops' houses in England and Wales (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing) p. 163, 173
  Elwes, Dudley George Cary, 1876, A history of the Castles, Mansions, and Manors of Western Sussex (London: Longmans) p. 261 online copy
Periodical Articles
- Buckwell, John C, 1914, ' Stories of Loxwood' Sussex Archaeological Collections Vol. 56 p. 161-191 online copy
Primary (Medieval documents or transcriptions of such documents - This section is far from complete and the secondary sources should be consulted for full references.)
- Maxwell Lyte, H.C. (ed), 1927, Calendar of Charter Rolls 5 Henry VI - 8 Henry VIII, AD 1427-1516, with an appendix, 1215-1288 Vol. 6. (HMSO) p. 94-5 online copy
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Payne, Naomi, 2003, The medieval residences of the bishops of Bath and Wells, and Salisbury (PhD Thesis University of Bristol) Appendix B: List of Medieval Bishop's Palaces in England and Wales (available via EThOS)

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.

The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
Help is acknowledged.

*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.

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