Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for ARUN (The)

ARUN (The), a river of Sussex. It rises in St. Leonard's forest; runs westward, past Horsham, to the vicinity of Loxwood; receives, by the way, a head-stream from Surrey; turns to the S, goes to Stopham, and receives there the Rother; and proceeds southward, past Arundel, to the English channel at Little Hampton. Its length of course is about 33 miles. It abounds with mullets, which are much famed under the name of Arundel mullets; and it also contains trout of superior quality, but in no great quantity. It is navigable for some distance from the sea; and it opens the way for inland navigation, through the Arundel and Portsmouth canal, with Chichester,-through the river Rother, with Petworth and Midhurst-and, through the Arun and Wey canal, with Guildford and the Thames. Canoes of the ancient British appear to have plied on it; and two, formed of open trunks, were found in 1834 and 1857 at North Stoke and South Stoke; one of them six feet below the surface of the soil, at 150 yards from the present edge of the river, and now preserved in the British Museum. The Arun has been sung by Collins and by Charlotte Smith; and the former, alluding to a brother poet, says,-

Wild Arun too has heard thy strains,
And Echo. 'midst thy native plains,
Been soothed by Pity's lute;
There first the wren thy myrtles shed
On gentlest Otway's infant head;
To him thy cell was shown.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a river"   (ADL Feature Type: "rivers")
Administrative units: Sussex AncC
Place names: ARUN     |     ARUN THE     |     THE ARUN
Place: Arun

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