Cocking, A Downland Village
- Published on Sunday, 10 February 2008 03:05
Cocking is a small village in the South Downs about three miles south of Midhurst in the county of West Sussex. The village nestles beneath Cocking Down over which the A286 runs south for 8 miles to Chichester, the cathedral city and county town.
Along the ridge of that hill and its neighbours, the South Downs Way runs from Eastbourne in East Sussex to Winchester in Hampshire. Hikers beating that path could do worse than to drop down the hill into the village for refreshment, to see the fascinating History Column and 11th Century Church or simply to visit Cocking 'just because it's there'.
Cocking's location and how to get there: Multimap - Google - Magic
Geograph of Cocking - a collection of photos linked to the grid references
History
There is evidence, in the form of tumuli, of Bronze Age settlement in Cocking. The Romans, Saxons, Normans and Cluniac monks were also here and the village is named after Cocca, a Saxon warlord who thought that this was a good place to put down roots.
The Domesday Book has an entry for Cochinges and at the other end of the time line, you are now reading about Cocking on the World Wide Web.
If you are interested in the history of the village, look no further than the excellent "A Short History of Cocking" published in 2005 by the Cocking History Group. It can be purchased at the village Post Office, itself housed in an old toll house.
The Future
Cocking is right in the middle of the new South Downs National Park that came into being on 1st April 2010 and will be fully functional on 1st April 2011. So although much in Cocking seems timeless, change is contnuous.
A document containing five pages of interesting 2001 Census data about Cocking Parish is available for download here.
Note: The source of this information is the National Statistics website: www.statistics.gov.uk. Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO.
