Between these is Ewhurst Manor, a 16th-century house[3] on an old moated site with a 14th-century stone gatehouse[4] and nearby artificial lake and farmstead.

The Normal Tidal Limit is at the footbridge near the church although a weir further downstream means only the highest tides reach this far.

[5] The parishes of Shermanbury and Cowfold comprised the Saxon hundred of Hamfelt, and was on the eastern boundary of the Norman Rape of Bramber.

[6] Shermanbury's Saxon name indicates its past function: the burh or defended stronghold of the scirman - shire man, perhaps the sheriff, but maybe some other official or steward.

[8] The abrupt slopes of the hillock used to be joined to the higher land to the east, but a second channel of the Cowfold Stream was cut through that peninsular long ago, making it an island.

Shermanbury's manor house and church on their knoll (TQ 214 188) is surrounded on all sides by the Adur and the Cowfold Streams and the fields were traditionally flood plains.

[8] To the south of the 18th century Shermanbury Place (which replaced the earlier manor house) is a reedy mill pond, whose peace is only broken by the calls of water birds.

To the west, where the old Cowfold Stream joins the Adur, are the footings, races, and wharf of the water mill that long clacked and rumbled there.

Its light-touch management, however, offers much more space for nature than over-busy tidying and modernisation and wintering snipe upon the brooks benefit from it.

[11][12][13] Inside 18th century pews have the names of farm houses to which they were allocated painted on the backs: Perrymans, Sakeham, Vadgers, Pooks, and so on.

A modern cut, through which flows the re-directed Cowfold Stream, now severs the spur from the high ground to its east, thus making Shermanbury a kind of island.

Wild Service tree survives in a few places and bluebells, wood anemones and midland hawthorn grace Wineham Lane's banks.

[8] However, over the last two centuries a series of new woods have been planted, many quite recently, whilst others have grown up from old furze fields, or from land left derelict.