Arrival of the Railway

by the late John Hayward

The first proposal for a railway linking London with Brighton was made in February, 1823 but it was not until the early 1830s that several rival proposals were put forward for a railway linking London with Brighton. A Parliamentary Committee was established and, after a lengthy process, recommended that the scheme of the London & Brighton Railway (L&BR), designed by Sir John Rennie, should be accepted. At least one of the other prospective routes came though Burgess Hill, but in a route across what is now the Town Centre rather than cutting though the hill.

Following the Royal Assent of the Act of Parliament on 15th July,1837, work commenced in 1838 with J. U. Rastrick appointed engineer in charge of the construction. The new railway commenced from a junction on the London and Croydon Railway (L&CR) near Norwood Junction. Very little machinery was used in its construction with 6,200 navvies being employed aided by 962 horses, 5 locomotives, 7 stationary engines, etc. Three lengthy tunnels were constructed at Merstham, Balcombe and Clayton plus shorter ones at Hayward’s Heath and Patcham.

The railway was opened as far as Hayward’s Heath on 12th July 1841, just three years to the day after the first sod was cut at Merstham, a remarkable achievement. The remaining section of line was opened on 21st September, 1841. The delay being mainly due to problems in stabilising some of the embankments north and south of Burgess Hill. An interim stage coach service was operated between Hayward’s Heath and Brighton, and, much the same as modern ‘rail replacement’ buses, it practically doubled the overall time of the journey from London to Brighton.

The basic construction materials for the embankments in the Burgess Hill area were the chalk excavated in the construction of the Clayton Tunnel south of Hassocks and sandstone excavated from the Haywards Heath tunnel and Folly Hill cutting. Having emerged from the cutting, where several workers had met with accidents, some fatal, the engineers were then faced with crossing the Adur valley. This problem was solved in local brick and the construction of the imposing Eight Arches viaduct. Land slips then occurred as they made up the embankments on the last lap down to Worlds End.

This difficult stretch has given rise to two possible reasons for the name Worlds End, the area around the present Wivelsfield station on the north side of Burgess Hill. It then lay at the southern end of Valebridge Common, which had recently been ‘enclosed’ and was neither a proper common nor proper agricultural land. It has been suggested that its desolate appearance and the difficulties they had faced made the navvies feel they were at ‘the World’s End’. An alternative explanation relates to the final achievement of a continuous track between London and Brighton. Because the embankments, in their separate materials, were simultaneously built up from Hassocks and down from Haywards Heath they had to meet somewhere and this was ‘World’s End’. The entire line could now open and the work that had occupied them for the past three years was finished – the end of their ‘world’. Whichever is right, the name is not found in any written record until 1865, suggesting that it had been used locally and had gradually established itself over the previous two decades.

Burgess Hill station was opened sometime shortly after the line was complete in 1841 and it initially consisted two basic wooden platforms and a shelter. It was the only station in Burgess Hill but on the 1st October 1843 it was closed and the buildings were sold for £6. However, a local campaign resulted it being reopened on 1st May, 1844 with new buildings provided.

In building the track through what is now the urban spread of Burgess Hill, account had to be taken of an old right of way from Ditchling Common to St. John’s Common windmill. This resulted in the footpath and bridge between Cants Lane and St. Wilfred’s Road, fondly known locally as ‘the Bumpy Bridge’. It was recorded in 1852 as ‘foot Road to St. John’s Common’ on a map of ‘Cants Farm’ where St. Andrew’s Church now stands. This became vital evidence in saving the right of way when the Railway company wanted to close it down in the 1980s, and more recently.

On 1st October 1847, a new railway was opened from Keymer Junction to Lewes, Eastbourne and Hastings. The L&CR and L&BR had amalgamated in July, 1846 as the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) and this was their new project. To serve the new line, not the main line, a small station named Keymer Junction, was built with short platforms built on the curve in between the actual junction and the Junction Road level crossing. It opened on 1st January, 1862. Following an accident on the junction, one of the company employees, John Saxby, designed and pioneered a new interlocking signalling system at Keymer Junction in 1856 which linked the signals to the points in order to prevent two trains being on the junction at the same time. He tried this out before telling his employers! It was the first such interlocking in the UK. You can find a little more information about Saxby on the Historic Events page.

When the Keymer Brick & Tile Company began production in 1875 at a site off Junction Road, adjacent to the Eastbourne line, a siding was built into the works. This brought in wagons, mainly of coal for firing the kilns, etc., and took out wagons of bricks, tiles and terra cotta ware. The firm benefitted greatly for many years from the nightly train taking their products down to the expanding towns of Eastbourne, Bexhill, St. Leonards and Hastings. However, there was a slow decline in traffic to and from the siding and it was eventually it was closed on 29th May, 1970.

People everywhere can be slow to adapt to change and presumably our former locals were no different and at first saw little use for the new-fangled rail. For Burgess Hill it was critical that the station on the hill did re-open because, when the well-to-do incomers began to build their houses there, the proximity of the railway station was an added draw. The expanded brick and tile manufacturers will already have started making use of it in a small way. In the ensuing decades it was the railway that allowed their products to reach distant markets in the UK and abroad. These two groups in the embryo town, the incoming residents and the large manufacturers, were presumably those who campaigned for its re-opening. They were right to do so. The railway would prove to be a key factor in the success of the growing community. The road bridge down from the hill across the railway is a prominent landscape feature of the modern town.

For the continuation of John Hayward’s precis of a life-time’s research, go to The ongoing story of the Railway: 1875 to the present day. For a little more information on John Saxby go to Royal Visits.