history
Southdowns Country Hotel is set in one of the most historic and unspoiled corners of England, and the house itself has an interesting background story.
Originally called Dumpford House it was built as a two storey, three bay house towards the end of the last century by the Hon John Jervis Carnegie (1807-1892). He bought the neighbouring Fair Oak estate from the Paget family about 1850 and was High Sheriff of Sussex in 1862. Hon John Jervis was the third son of the 7th Earl of Northesk and his initials can be seen on the stone boundary post to the left of the Southdowns entrance.
The Northesk family still own Fair Oak but Southdowns was sold prior to 1895 when the top floor and water tower were built. At that time it was the home of a German artist Rudolf Blind, and later of the Boyes family. Southdowns was also run for many years as a private school for wayward boys, becoming the Southdowns Guest House prior to the last war. During the war it provided a billet for members of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Southdowns is part of the scattered hamlet of Dumpford; the name derived from the Old English for a ford by a dam - the dam in this case powered the local water mill for centuries. Dumpford may have been a small community but it gave its name to the Dumpford Hundred Court, who from the 10th century administered one of the hundreds or division of the shire. There were twenty-one in West Sussex each officially representing one hundred families; Dumpford included those in Trotton and Rogate. Dumpford perhaps, because of the ford would have been an ideal meeting place for the court: business was transacted in the open air; perhaps on or very near the site of Southdowns. Those involved would have worshipped in the little chapel which fell into disuse by the 14th century, which stood in the field still called Chapel Plot to the east of the hotel.
Although today the area is within easy access to Gatwick and Heathrow airports by road or rail to London and the Coast, it is still very much a farming community, as it was in the days of Dumpford Hundred Court.
