Greener than most towns ever get, with a stately park next door. Green space starts about a minute from the average front door. Water is a short walk away. The pubs outnumber the restaurants by a distance. Most places sell countryside access at a premium. Here it comes with the address.
Green space is close. Homes in Petworth sit on average about 80 metres from the nearest green space, with around 13 green spaces within a kilometre. The biggest is Petworth Park, laid out by Capability Brown and now looked after by the National Trust, which spares residents the cost of maintaining a landscape they get to walk through. Further out, Pitshill and the Manor of Dean is a registered park and garden of its own.
Water is closer than you'd expect for an inland town. The nearest water is on average about 400 metres from home, with around 15 water features within a kilometre. They're ponds, streams and lakes rather than a seafront, but enough to give a dog walk somewhere to aim for.
The high street isn't mainly a food destination. Rated premises in the area include 92 shops, 16 pubs and 3 restaurants. That's a town built for browsing and a pint rather than a tasting menu. Anyone moving here for the dining scene will be doing a lot of driving, and a lot of cooking at home.
Air quality is measured at council level: across the Chichester district, fine-particle pollution averaged about 6 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024. That's a district-wide figure, not a reading from Petworth's own streets.
The character comes from old buildings and older landscape. Around the town, the surrounding villages of Byworth, Tillington, Upperton and Fittleworth each have a conservation area of their own. There's a Georgian-era mill-country relic in the Coultershaw beam pump, a scheduled monument. Bowl barrows and a round barrow cemetery are scattered across the nearby commons. People have been burying their dignitaries in the view for rather longer than estate agents have been selling it. The villages this page also covers go further into the hills. Graffham sits on the northern escarpment of the South Downs inside the South Downs National Park. Lodsworth lies between Midhurst and Petworth, and Northchapel sits up towards the Surrey border.
Private gardens are generous. There's about 273,000 square metres of garden for every 1,000 residents. That's the measure of how much private outdoor space people have, and it isn't small. Buyers from a city terrace will be finding out how long a lawnmower takes to cover a proper garden.
The business rates valuation list carries 170 premises in the area, with shops the largest category and offices next. Those are premises on the rating list, not a count of businesses trading this week. A unit on the list can sit empty as easily as it can sell antiques or coffee.
For eating out, 95% of the 20 food premises with a hygiene rating hold the top score of five, and none is rated low. The choice is small, but you won't be taking a risk with any of it.
No area of outstanding natural beauty, site of special scientific interest or ancient woodland overlaps the area covered here. That doesn't count against the place. The green space here is parkland, farmland and commons rather than a protected-habitat map, and it's used for living in rather than looking at.
The area around Petworth is one of its real strengths: a stately park, green space on nearly every doorstep, big gardens and old villages close by, without the tourist bustle that usually comes with them.