Pagham-on-Sea: Historical Sites

Are historical sites preserved? Do any have a haunted, tragic, or sacred legacy? #WIPWorldBuilders pic.twitter.com/EedCy0AB1q

— Pepper the Aro-Ace Phoenix (@pepperdaphoenix) January 7, 2019

There are lots of historical sites in the town of varying importance, so let’s go through them in roughly chronological order.

Here are the main four:

(1) The Long Barrow

The 5,000-year-old long barrow in Barrow Field, the burial sites of prehistoric people of great importance. No one knows who they were, and two of the barrows are in a poor state of repair and basically just mounds now. One, however, is in near-perfect condition and has many intriguing carvings and symbols inside. Don’t start messing around with those. It gets Weird.

(2) The Ironworks and Meteor Crash Site

The Romans had an ironworks which got struck by a meteor and is now part of the folklore of the area. The iron-rich soil and the shattered rock from outer space are said to have strange properties… There’s a medieval chronicle extract on this for your viewing pleasure.

(3) The Historic Docks & Barker Crescent

The Historic Docks were medieval in origin but really took off in the Industrial Revolution. In the 19thC, Joseph Barker the lycanthropic entrepreneur built factories and a mill, the railway spur (now a cycling path) and a small village for his workers on the edge of town called Barker Crescent, complete with a small cottage hospital, Barker Infirmary. The workers were mostly werewolves, and Barker Crescent is now 100% werewolf territory, with the Five Packs still roughly corresponding to the five main groups within Barker’s original workforce.

Today, the Historic Docks have been turned into a small seaside museum with restaurants and cafés for the tourists, and are still used by local fishermen and people who like messing about in boats. Donkey rides on the beach and a small, spooky and dilapidated fairground, are some of the summer attractions you will find there today.

(4) Fairwood House

Fairwood House, nicknamed The Crows because of the nesting site of corvids in the woods behind it, is the titular setting for the novel The Crows. A lot of the house’s history is in that novel, but there’s also some edited journal entries in a post here, that gives more intimate, disturbing context to some of its past owners.