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CHAPTER III. 
GEOLOGICAL POSITION OF BOGNOR AND THE SUSSEX COAST 
TO BRIGHTON. 
Boewor, situated in the parish of South Bersted, has gradually risen 
to an extensive town for the accommodation of visitors, who resort to 
the sea-coast for a summer residence or for the benefit of sea-bathing ; 
many families remain in it during the winter, some of the houses being 
of a very superior class. The Duchess of Kent and her present Ma- 
jesty when Princess Victoria resided at Bognor for some time. 
The Bognor rocks have been long celebrated for containing beauti- 
ful fossils of the Eocene period; they are now only seen at low-water. 
The general opinion is, that these rocks formerly were the southern 
boundary of Bognor before the mundation of Pagham Harbour. In 
deeds of the date of Queen Elizabeth, which are still extant, the south- 
ern boundary of Bognor was called Bognor Common, an extensive 
tract of land, over which there was a right of pasture for a certain 
number of beasts. This common in the time of the Saxons and at 
a much later period was covered with trees, and formed part of the 
Bishop’s Park at Selsey, extending as far as Ferring to the east*. 
The Bognor rocks are composed like the ‘ Barn’ of an arenaceous 
* The park was not gone in Bishop Sherburne’s time, as it appears that in the 25th of the 
reign of Henry VIII.,a lease was granted of it by that bishop to John Lews and Agatha his wife, 
at a rent of £4, with a covenant to have sufficient herbage for seventy or eighty deer.’’—Bazter’s 
Mistory of Sussex. 
