West Sussex History:

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Findon, and Tarring.
Ham, the last place God made 3 refers to the out-of-the-world position of the village.
At Findon, 4 m, on the road from Worthing to Horsham, is a, good early English church (of S. John Baptist). The roof deserves notice. In the church are two stone seats, with a door between them-
10.5 m. West Worthing Stat. This is the frightful suburb of a dreary place.
1.5 m. north of the station is Tarring- The church (St Andrew) has a tall spire. The tower window was erected to Robert Southey by his eldest daughter, Mrs. Warter, wife of the rector. The place has been a ' peculiar' of the Archbishops of Canterbury from the time of Athelstan, The National School is a fine fragment of the Archbishop's Palace, which was early English, altered in perpendicular times.
The small but famous Tarring Fig Orchard (on the right of the village street, entrance, is said to have been planted by Richard de la Wych, the sainted Bishop of Chichester, who ' grafted fruit-trees at Tarring with his own hand.' Others ascribe the garden to Becket, and a fig-tree is shown as planted by him. The original figs were probably brought from Fecamp to Sompting, and thence here: the later figs were planted in 1745. It is curious that at the ripening of the figs large flights of beccafic- like those of the Roman Campagna, come to Sompting and Tarring, and nowhere else,
Parsonage Row, Tarring, dates from the time of Henry VI. A path leads north from the churchyard to 1.5m Salvington where, in a muddy lane on the left, at Lacies, is the very humble cottage where the learned John Selden was born, Dec. 16, 1584, his father being a wandering fiddler, who used to go about to play at village fairs.
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