BINSTEAD WOODS RECORDED IN SLS AND USING SPIRIT TALKER APP

Mature woodland covering one third of the parish, mostly in the north, consists of mixed deciduous oak and ash with remnants of coppicing. Its extent has not changed greatly since 1840, and it contains many indications of being ancient. The woodland reaches the parish boundary on the north, which in the Middle Ages was the pale of Arundel Great park. Binsted's woods were evidently part of Arundel forest, which in the early 15th century included Avisford in Walberton. Avisford was the meeting place of the hundred, which was called Binsted hundred in 1086. An earthwork which in 1992 ran south from Avisford through Hundredhouse copse in Binsted was perhaps a forest bank. In the early 15th century the forest included Favarches wood, named after a 14th-century lord of Binsted.