The village name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon 'sengel', which means "burnt clearing". Singleton was listed in the Domesday Book as the ancient hundred of the same name with 237 households including the settlements of East Lavant, Mid Lavant, Binderton and Preston. In Singleton parish itself there were 167 households: 89 villagers, 58 smallholders and 20 slaves; with ploughing land, woodland, meadows, three mills and a church, it had a value to the lords of the manor of £121. In 1861, the population of the Anglican parish, was 556 and the area was. Between 1880 and 1953 a railway served the village at Singleton station. The station complex is now a private dwelling.
Landmarks
Parish church
The Anglican parish church has Anglo-Saxon nave walls and massive square tower. The aisles were added later. This was a hundredal church, the central church of the Hundred of Singleton, a Saxon administrative grouping of parishes. The tower has three Saxon windows and a Saxon doorway leading into thin air high up in the nave, showing that there was once an upper room above the nave. It is likely that the priests for the churches in the hundred would have lived in this room. The Saxon tower arch was rebuilt in the twelfth or thirteenth century with a pointed arch. The pews are from the Tudor period. The church is a Grade I listed building.
Goodwood
lies in the south of the parish, part of the Goodwood House estate.
There is an oil well in Singleton forest in the north of the parish. This is one of 84 wells on DECC’s list for East and West Sussex, some dating back over 100 years. There have been two pollution incidents at the Singleton Oil Field. These occurred in the early 1990s, and were caused by failure of cement behind the conductor and the 9 5/8-inch casing. This was identified as a result of five groundwater monitoring boreholes installed at the Singleton Oil Field in 1993. The leak was from the well cellar via the preinstalled conductor and the 9 5/8-inch casing, both of which appear not to have been adequately cemented in-situ in at least one well. A thorough investigation commenced in 1997, including the drilling of a number of additional boreholes, and the carrying out of tracer tests and CCTV examination under the auspices of, and in consultation with, the UK Environment Agency. The leak paths, once identified and verified, were remediated. Monitoring has continued since that time and the observed pollution levels have remained below those set by the Environment Agency as requiring further action.
