It’s well signposted from Petersfield and anyone heading to Chichester may have seen a lot of it recently given the closure of the B2146 by the parish church.

But South Harting and its siblings might attract even more attention after a glowing write-up in a national newspaper.

The Sunday Times recently named The Hartings as one of the country’s top 20 “Best Secret Villages” with the Rother Valley communities coming fourth on the list.

The Hartings boast a pub, shop, a good range of well-kept period cottages and farmhouses, and views of the South Downs at every turn according to its author.

Tim Palmer adds the “pretty villages” have also become a magnet for families with £1.5 million to spend on a detached home with a garden big enough to grow veg and perhaps keep bees and a chicken or two.

He writes: “South Harting, which is bigger than East and West (there is no north), remains as quintessentially bucolic as when it featured in the 1957 documentary An English Village.”

But although there’s a nod to the cricket pitch and the annual Harting festivities in the report – no mention of Sky Park Farm or Ditcham Park School, though – there’s the inevitable nudge to would-be commuters given its relative proximity to Petersfield and its Waitrose.

There’s also an unofficial waiting list for good-sized houses in the village according to a West Sussex estate agents with young families regularly snapping them up despite the average £851,000 price of property in the Hartings.