Westhampnett in Peace and War

 Westhampnett in Peace and War

We know that Reginald and Violet Peel moved to the village of Westhampnett, near Chichester in West Sussex, around 1926, as Laurence was born there in 1927 and Michaell in 1929.

The village has a Saxon origin, predating the Norman conquest, and lies on Stane (‘Stone’) Street, the 50-mile Roman road from London to Noviomagus Reginorum (Saxon Chichester, home to the Celtic Regnenses, a satellite of the Atrebates tribe), now the A285 A-road. In the Domesday Book, when the village was part of the ancient manor of Boxgrove, there was woodland, scrubland for grazing pigs, a mill and 16 cottager holdings, with an annual value to the lord of the manor of £3.

Just over a mile up the road are the ruins of the fortified manor of Halknaker (locally called ‘Ha’naker’) and the windmill on Halnaker Hill, which gives us another Vlieland connection. The poet Hilaire Belloc, a prominent voice in the ‘Flee to the Fields’ movement along with William Shove (eldest son of Alice Vlieland’s sister Bertha and Frances Vlieland’s best man at her marriage to Reginald Peel in 1906), mourned the death of rural England in his 1923 poem Ha’naker Mill, which reminds us of the desolation of the Coulson mills in Boughton under Blean the 1870s:

‘the sweeps have fallen from Ha’naker Mill. ...

Ruin a-top and a field unploughed.’

There is another description of Westhamptnett, in 1940: ‘a small grass airfield, nestled at the foot of the downs’ from where the crews of 145 Squadron took part in the Battle of Britain. Squadrons based at Westhampnett during World War II took part in almost every aerial engagement in the European war, and were one of the jewels in the crown of the RAF. The Squadron Leader in charge of 145 Squadron was John Ralph Alexander Peel DFC, DSO, the son of Basil Gerard Peel DSO CBE of the Indian Army 1st Madras Pioneers (decorated in George V’s Birthday Honours in 1923). John Peel is credited with firing the first shots of the Battle of Britain in July 1940; he was in action again on 8 August 1940 when in defence of 20 merchant ships in Convoy CW9, Convoy Peewit, his Squadron of Hurricanes ‘fought the fight of their lives’ in a vicious engagement with German dive-bombers over the Channel.

We do not yet know why Reginald and Violet settled in Westhampnett, when Reginald’s family were from Exeter and their later years were in Brighton. Certainly John seems not to be the link, as he only came to the village when he joined his Squadron. We are now exploring the baptismal records for Laurence and Michael to find out their parents’ address when they registered the births and when they arrived in the village. More, we hope, will follow.


The description of RAF Westhampnett as ‘a small grass airfield ...’, and other details in the post, are taken from Westhampnett at War by Mark Hillier, with many thanks.

Thanks Barbara