Пойнингс: Деревня в Западном Сассексе

Village and civil parish in West Sussex, England

Poynings ('/p//ɔɪ//n//ɪ//ŋ//z/ or /local/'/p//ʌ//n//ɪ//ŋ//z/) is a village and civil parish in the Mid Sussex District of West Sussex, England. The parish lies wholly with the South Downs National Park. To its south is Brighton and Hove, to its west is the Fulking parish, to its east is the Newtimber parish and to its north is Albourne parish. The planning authority for Poynings is the South Downs National Park Authority (SDNPA), the statutory planning authority for the National Park area. The village is located on the north side of the South Downs near Devil's Dyke, five miles (8 km) north west of Brighton. The civil parish covers an area of and has a population of 287 (2001 census), including Newtimber and increasing to 432 at the 2011 Census. Others have suggested it means, “The people of the pond”. The downland scarp, which includes the Fulking and Perching bostals (paths), is part of the Beeding Hill to Newtimber Hill designated Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Poynings civil parish contains ten listed buildings. Of these, one is Grade I and the remaining nine are Grade II. The parish contains four scheduled monuments.

The Parish Church of the Holy Trinity (List Entry Number 1285135) – see above. Devil's Dyke hillfort (List Entry Number 1014953), a large univallate hillfort dating to the Iron Age, situated on a chalk spur which forms part of the Sussex Downs. Post medieval stock enclosure at Devil's Dyke (List Entry Number 1014954), which survives as a north east south west aligned, rectangular earthwork. It was used for the stalling of working oxen and as winter housing for fatstock cattle. Before excavation in 1908, it was assumed to be a burial mound. Romano British farmstead 480m north west of Devil's Dyke Cottages (List Entry Number 1017649), which survives largely in buried form and is visible as an area of hollows and uneven ground.

Poynings is a little village on the north side of the Downs. Its church is cathedral like and comparable to Alfriston church without the spire. There is a public house, the Royal Oak, in the village which is a popular stop off point for walkers ascending the scarp slope. Also of note are the large ponds fed from the Downs, including the Poynings springhead , which has a little pumping station hidden in a lush gill wood and the old mill pond , both to the southeast of the village.

Holy Trinity Church is Poynings’ parish church, located at the east end of the village, on The Street The church is in the Church of England Diocese of Chichester, Archdeaconry of Horsham. The church is a Grade I listed building, described in the National Heritage List for England as 'One of the finest village medieval churches in Sussex' (List Entry Number 1285135, first listed 28 October 1957). The church was in the Domesday book but it was rebuilt by the de Poynings family in 1370. Its similarity to Alfriston church have left some people speculating that it had the same master mason architect. The church has an echoing empty interior and scant signs of the wealth of the donor family. There are only the smallest fragments of fourteenth century glass surviving in the plain glass windows. With its big, centralised, empty interior it has been noted that it feels more like a grand old mosque than the usual homely busy ness of many medieval parish churches. In 2016 a new owner illegally felled hundreds of tree in Pondtail Wood before being ordered to stop by the council. The wood has since been sold to a more responsible owner in 2017.

Stonestaples Wood is in the centre of the Poynings parish. It is the only one of the Poynings Crossways woods that sits on the Wealden Clay. It must have once joined to the other woods, but the intervening ground to its east is fertile Lower Greensand, and so was farmed and ploughed centuries ago. The wood is rich in fungi, often colourful, and has big old hornbeam stools under an ash canopy, over anemones, primroses, bluebells and orchids. There is now a new owner who is committed to the wood's restoration.

To the south of Poynings is the scarp. On the eastern base of slope is an old hazel coppice and spring bluebells. There are a number of ancient bostal paths going up the scarp. The most varied and interesting route is The Bostal Road, a bridlepath, which curves through the woods and at its top passes the Iron Age ramparts above the Dyke Valley. The Wickhurst Bostal starts at Wickhurst Barns, passes a tiny chalk quarry with a Victorian limekiln still intact, and tops at the junction with another bostal down to Fulking. Another path, which was called the Butter Track two centuries ago, takes you steeply up the scarp to the Dyke Pub. The ancient terrace way (now a bridleway) that tracks down and across the south slope of the Dyke Valley is probably part of the Roman route starting at Southwick, on the coast, and joining the Roman road now called the Greensand Way south of Hurstpierpoint. The Devil's Dyke Farm's barns and cottages were built around 1950 and are the very last generation of farm buildings to be built with relatively traditional uses and proportions. Despite this, it still has the well preserved ramparts of an Iron Age hill fort and much of its special biodiversity has been retained.

The Devil's Punch Bowl is the little rounded hill between Saddlescombe and the mouth of the Dyke Valley. It is a peaceful place and its steep northern slopes are covered in cowslips in spring and fragrant orchid in early summer.

Adder Bottom has the lynchet lines of an Iron Age field system visible in good evening light. There is prehistoric bowl barrow called Scabes Castle which marks the corner of the Poynings and Fulking parishand the Brighton boundary. It is now only detectable by a slight rise in the fence line as it crosses the ploughed out mound.