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Petworth - 'Pytta's/Peota's enclosure'.

The town is mentioned in Domesday Book. It is best known as the location of the stately home Petworth House, the grounds of which (known as Petworth Park) are the work of Capability Brown. The House and its grounds are now owned and maintained by the National Trust.

In the early seventeenth century, the question of Petworth's status as an Honour or a town came up when the Attorney General charged William Levett of Petworth, Gent., son of Anthony Levett, with "having unlawfully usurped divers privileges within the town of Petworth, which was parcel of the Honour of Arundel." William Levett's son Nicholas became rector of Westbourne, West Sussex.

Another historic attraction in the town, Petworth Cottage Museum in the High Street, is a museum of domestic life for poor estate workers in the town in about 1910. At that time the cottage was the home of Mrs. Cummings, a seamstress, whose drunken husband had been a farrier in the Royal Irish Hussars and on the Petworth estate.

The railway line between Pulborough and Midhurst once had a station at Petworth, but the line was closed to passenger use in 1955, and finally to freight in 1966, though the station building survives as a bed and breakfast establishment.

Petworth fell victim to bombing in World War II on the 29 September 1942, when a lone German Heinkel 111, approaching from the south over Hoes Farm, aimed three bombs at Petworth House, which missed the house, but one of which bounced off a tree and landed on the Petworth Boys School in North Street. 28 boys lost their lives along with the headmaster Charles Stevenson and assistant teacher Charlotte Marshall.