About the House
A short account of the rectory and observatory above the Arun valley, the Trust that keeps it, and the observers who carry the day — written by the Trust each January and revised on the wall in the vestibule.
The Astronomer’s Rectory
Thornveil House was built in the spring and summer of 1817 on a chalk shoulder above the Arun valley by the Reverend Silas Thornveil (1768–1842), rector of the small parish of Thornveil-cum-Wiggonholt and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society from its founding in 1820. The land was held by the rectory and was set under stone on his fiftieth-year, with the principal contract going to John Coombes, a master-mason of Petworth, and the carpentry to the Petworth estate yard.
The observatory wing was finished in October 1817 with a south-facing platform set above the rectory’s south range, fitted with a transit instrument by Edward Troughton of London (number 187 in his maker’s book) and a small altazimuth by John Dollond. Reverend Thornveil published The Sussex Constellations from the platform in 1828 and continued his nightly observations until 1839; the work was carried on by his son Edmund and his grandson Septimus until November 1872, when the principal instruments were sold to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and the platform shutters were closed for the last time.
The Thornveil Trust
The freehold of the property passed to the Diocese of Chichester in 1884 and through three rectory tenancies thereafter, before the Thornveil Trust was constituted as a charitable body of four trustees and the freehold was acquired from the Diocese by deed of November 1969. The Trust undertook the structural restoration between 1970 and 1971 under the direction of the master-of-works Adelaide Mowbray (the great-great-niece of Septimus Thornveil, and chair of the Trust to this day), opened the hotel to its first guests in 1974, and has held the house in trust without interruption since.
The four trustees in office at present are Adelaide Mowbray (chair, 1974–), Frederick Hethrington (1985–), Imogen Crowle (1991–), and Marcus Pendleton (2003–). The Trust meets each January on the night of the Quadrantid meteor peak to settle the year’s standing register, review the duty observer’s notes, and rewrite the observation index if any answer has changed.
The Duty Observer
The day-to-day running of the hotel is carried by the duty observer, a salaried position held in turn by three members of the working staff, each on a fortnight’s rota. The observer carries the keys, keeps the standing register, opens and closes the observatory on the days the room is opened, and writes a short evening note that is held in the small bookcase at the head of the south stair. The note is read by the next observer, by the trustees in January, and by no one else.
The observer’s working spine of the house is the south stair: keys are passed at the half-landing, the morning post is sorted on the lower step where the south light falls best, and the standing register is held in the bookcase above. The observer does not entertain guests in the observatory and does not play.
A Restored Star-Watch Room
The Observatory was returned to use in January 2019 after a four-year programme of conservation work. The original Petworth oak boards were lifted, cleaned, and re-laid; the 1817 Troughton transit and Dollond altazimuth were stabilised and left in place against the south wall, kept polished and out of working order since the working instruments went to Greenwich in 1872; the long-wall windows south over the down were re-leaded and re-glazed; and the platform shutters were rehung in their original 1817 form for the use of guests of the hotel.
The room is a feature of the hotel and not its purpose. It is opened by the duty observer from seven in the evening until midnight on the days the observer judges it suitable, and is closed at the observer’s discretion or at any guest’s request. The hotel does not host wagers, hold accounts, or operate as a gambling platform; the room is presented as a restored star-watch within a working downland country hotel.