Half Moon Inn, Northchapel, West Sussex

I discovered this pub thanks to this British Pathé video on YouTube:

...and was pleased to be able to fit it in at the end of a walk along the Serpents Trail, and, better still, to find it still has much the same character today. The specific artefacts on display today may not all be the same as those to be seen in the film from the 1950s, but the overall feel is very similar, and it appears the core of the interior is fundamentally unchanged.

The exterior of the pub does not immediately give away its eccentric interior. It's in a vernacular style for the area, a predominantly brick building with tiles covering the walls of the upper floor, and the half moon motif adorning the shutters of the window on the ground floor. The shutters look like they may have been replaced since the 50s, and there's a new sign pronouncing the name of the pub, but those details aside externally it hardly appears to have changed at all in the last 60 years.

The red tractor outside and a Santa Claus scaling the walls were the only real hints of the eclectic nature of what lay in store inside.

The inglenook fireplace forms the centrepiece of the pub, and greets the visitor immediately on arrival. As could be seen in the Pathé film, there were seats arranged directly in front of the fireplace, and although the pub was nearly empty on my visit I can imagine this usually to be the most convivial spot. Although the horse brasses have been moved (there are some now on the lintel of the fireplace on the other side of the chimney stack), the collection of copper pans and kettles looks fairly consistent with the 50s.

Elsewhere, various other nik naks hang from the walls and ceilings. Carpenter's tools, agricultural equipment, sports gear, brewing paraphernalia, pulleys, jugs, tankards, hops, a boomerang, all sorts really.

The collection of oddities has perhaps been thinned down a bit since the 1950s, and they've consciously or otherwise moved to focus more on artefacts with simple rustic charm, rather than some of the less bucoclic curios which can be seen in the film. The collection of international bank notes which could be seen near the fireplace have gone - perhaps because this has become a bit of a cliché often seen in tourist bars around the world. Also less evident is the WW2 militaria which rather stands out in the film, and I have to say I'm glad, because that wouldn't exactly evoke a sense of pastoral serenity.

There are three roughly distinct spaces to the pub, the main bar area and then adjoining rooms to either side. The main bar area is a little more spick and span, and at least one of the flanking rooms has a bit more of a jumble sale feel to it, and gives the sense of being less frequently used. Herein can be found the other side of the inglenook fireplace, and I like to imagine the horse brasses here are the ones originally seen round the other side in the film.

It's very much a family run pub today. On my visit the wife of the family was behind the bar, while her husband was organising two of their kids to finish off the Christmas decorations and attend to other chores. At least one beer was served directly from the barrel (or to be more specific one of those bag-in-box things on the counter top) - and the food was fittingly old fashioned. I had a Ploughman's lunch, served on pleasingly uncontemporary crockery - there were even paper doilies.

Had the well dressed couple from the Pathé video returned today they would not have felt entirely out of place. Which is exactly how it should be.

Half Moon Inn
Northchapel, Petworth GU28 9HP

Phone: 01428 707270