The Birth of the Town 1770-1860

The more up-market local farmers will have been the first to see the financial benefits of new bricks and mortar over grazing a weary common. They will later have found occasion to call on the backwoods farmers, struggling along on a few acres, and the conversation would have transferred to farmhouse kitchens.  The possible snag which could scupper the whole idea was that every single one of the local farmers or cottagers who held rights of common, however lowly he may be, had to sign their assent to the drastic step that was being proposed. Only they had the power of decision on this.

Sir Richard Michelbourne’s plan, as lord of the manor of Keymer, to enclose St John’s and Valebridge Commons in 1633, failed because not every commoner would sign up to it. (see image with signatures) It would have been a scheme entirely geared to improvement of agriculture and the Burgess Hill we know could never have evolved as it did.

To willingly forgo one’s rights of common, a right proudly held and defended for hundreds of years, was a startling thought. But gradually, the argument took hold: ‘Perhaps, if we sold our rights of common and built a few houses instead, life would be a bit easier. It’s a slog, raising cattle, losing out if market prices fall …the same old grind… Maybe we should look into it!

And so, though there were arguments and objections along the way, the scheme went ahead after 3 years of meetings and numerous objections raised by commoners along the way; and the residential roads around the Town Centre stand where they do, aligned as they are, as a direct result of the decisions taken by the Surveyor appointed by the Enclosure Commissioners in 1828.

The image depicts an abridged enclosure plan of the part of St. John’s Common that was in Keymer manor and parish.

It was designed to attract buyers and this copy has been coloured to highlight the plots for sale (shown as blue).

Many of the hedge lines of the plots determined where the residential roads of the Town Centre would later be laid out.

Within the old common you can see the two prominent old brick and tile enclosures jutting into the Common on the south (Station Road to Civic Way and Church Walk area) and the smaller brick and tile site at Dumbrells Farm, north of Leylands Road.

The triangular enclosure in the common was one of the Poor houses, for the homeless and those who were out of work.

The Windmill, built a few decades earlier off what later became Mill Road, is also shown.

The first photo is of Park Road at the north east corner of St. John’s Park. Its alignment follows the plots laid out in 1829 by the Keymer Enclosure. The second photograph is Sussex Terrace, the north part of Mill Road, which the enclosure plan created in 1829 as a completely new road, replacing several former tracks across the common.

To see the full plan go to: The extinction of S. John’s Common: the Keymer side and to find out how the community of St. John’s Common used to live from earlier times down to 1828 go to: Earlier History

Once the Keymer side of St John’s Common was enclosed, the existing small rural brickmakers could significantly expand their works by buying some of this new land.  New workers then flocked in from outside and created a housing need. And then the Railway came. Big changes followed.  More new houses were built and more new working families arrived to construct them. Two old brick and file firms, Dunstalls and Meeds survived the changes.

The photo’s show: first, Meeds yard in Station Road, and second, one of its old kilns, derelict after 1952 when the yard ceased trading.  The playing fields of Burgess Hill Academy are visible in the background.

A drawing from the 1842 Keymer parish Tithe map, showing the larger brick and tile complex of William Shaw at the junction of London Road and Station Road and that of William and Richard Norman a short distance to the north. It is also clear to see that 12 years after the completion of the Keymer enclosure, road and house building in our present town centre had not yet begun.

This map of 1842 shows that the creation of anticipated new housing along the London to Brighton turnpike road, which the Keymer Enclosure scheme had envisaged, was brought to nothing because the existing brickmakers bagged the lion’s share of prime sites.  William Shaw former manager at ‘Meeds’ yard’, then built new industrial-scale works in plot 446. The new plots in green are those of his son-in -law, heir, and next producer at the works, Michael L. Daynes’.  (William Gravett later bought the works for his son John.)

Edward Harmes was manager in 1842 of the yard later owned by William Meads, (yellow). Harmes and William Norman each had a mixture of pre-existing brickyards and new land. Norman’s land (mauve) includes his new industrial site on plot 449. His pre-existing brick and tile yard and land comprised plots 433-439, 442 and 444.

The Rev. James Garbett, rector of Clayton-cum-Keymer had recently acquired from M.L. Daynes a former brick yard known as Grove Farm (plots 407 and 402-3 in pink).

This plan is developed by H. Warne from a tracing from the original Keymer Parish Tithe map and schedule dated 1842, in West Sussex Record Office. The schedule, called an ‘Award’, gives the names of owners and occupiers and acreages of each numbered plot. All the parish tithe maps and awards are now available on line.

For modern reference, the future course of Church Road and Lower Church Road have here been plotted in red and London Road and Station Road are named in red. The site on which the parish church would be built 21 years later in 1863 is also shown in plot 425.

Industry gradually expanded further, boosted by the railway which could take their products to distant markets. More land had to be found for housing. The solution was to dispense with the remainder of St. John’s Common – the part which lay west of the London Road. All the ancillary trades had burgeoned as well, brick and tile manufacture: carpenters, roofers, glaziers and other specialists.  But because so many new families had come into the area in a short space of time, suddenly there were not enough houses for the workers and their families to live in. So, the question was asked, ‘Why don’t we cut up the west side of the Common, the bit that’s in Clayton parish on the other side of the London Road – and build houses there’?  ‘Yes, count me in’ was the unanimous vote that was returned from the commoners on the Clayton side.

The new house plots for sale on the Clayton side of the common were mainly laid out in Fairfield Road (north), Cromwell Road (north side) and West Street.  The first houses to be built were mainly at the north end of Fairfield Road and in West Street (see images below). Each plot accommodated a pair or a row of three small houses, many of which still stand today. In West Street they please the eye and provide a varied and interesting residential townscape.  Surprisingly, this area has been left out of the local Conservation Area, perhaps from ignorance of its origins. The old sheep fairs were to be accommodated in a new, larger site than the old one (Fair Lea Close) which would also double up as a cricket  and recreation ground (Fairfield Rec.). Unsurprisingly, the Inn built nearby was called The Cricketers.

Together with the older hub of Fairplace Hill and the ongoing house building created by the Keymer Enclosure scheme, in London Road, Park Road, Lower Church Road, the town end of Mill Road, Station Road and Grove Road, a visible new community had been created under the name ‘St. John’s Common’.

The photo shows an interpretive plan of the Clayton part of St johns Common, depicted in white, which lay west of the London road. The house plots for sale are depicted in yellow, and surrounding farmland in green.

Base map: O.S sheet 39 (part) surveyed 1874-1879, scale 6 in. to 1 mile, showing such development as had taken place in the common by then. The old boundary dividing Clayton and Keymer, depicted on the map (highlighted green), was by then redundant within the new parish of Burgess Hill.

Colour interpretation:

WHITE: allotments of the old common still undeveloped, owned by various former commoners and heirs etc.
MID-GREEN: the surrounding farmland.
BROWN/ORANGE: old cottage plots in the common.
LIME GREEN: site of the old sheep fairs at Fairplace Hill, new ground for recreation, sheep fairs and cricket.
YELLOW: plots put up for sale, mainly developed in 1875 as houses, the “Cricketers” and Royal George pubs.
PURPLE: land reerved for the lord of the manor – still undeveloped in 1875.
BLUE: land reserved for a church – still undeveloped in 1875.
PINK: the Keymer side of the former Common.

The hill itself was anciently called Burgess Hill, usually spelt in the 1600s as Burghesehill (all one word).  Out of several prospective alignments in our area by rival companies for the proposed new London Brighton and South Coast Railway, the chosen route not only cut through the west flank of the hill called Burgess Hill but a railway station was opened there in 1841.  The images show a steam train approaching Burgess Hill Station, and another at Keymer Junction looking from lower Leylands Road entrance on the corner of Junction Road. The third image is of Tower House which was on the corner of Silverdale Road and Juction Road.

The railway was designed to serve the people and industry of the infant town of St. John’s Common. But incomers with a bit of money immediately looked east, uphill, for a new house. There was fresh country air, woodland walks and beautiful views all around.  Well-to-do people began to flock there and build themselves capacious mansions on large plots.

At the same time, despite the expanding brick and tile production at the heart of the old common heart of St. John’s Common, the northern perimeter on Leylands Road still had lots of spare land and its own set of views – the Downs south and the high Cuckfield ridge to the north.  It attracted its own set of the well-to-do and accommodated their large mansions and Victorian villas (see images below). The result was that all these new upper middle-class residents, Hill and Common, rolled up their sleeves, together with the leading industrialists and other residents, to create their own single ‘community’ out of the spread of new bricks and mortar.

The ecclesiastical parish was created with its new church of St. John the Evangelist in local red brick and the community later gained its own place in Local Government as an Urban District Council.  The town name lumbered on for a long time as St. John’s Common and Burgess Hill, but by 1890 or so, generally speaking, the Common had been dropped. The Town of Burgess Hill had arrived.

St. John’s Church built in the style of the gothic revival, and with its distinctive spire shown here shortly after completion in 1863.

Both names – St John’s Common & Burgess Hill running side by side at the Gas Company showroom in the 1950s

And finally – a selection of images showing Burgess Hill businesses.

To find out more about the Birth of the Town and the early stages of its growth, go to:

The London to Brighton turnpike road

The extinction of S. John’s Common: the Keymer side, 1828-9

The extinction of St. John’s Common: the Clayton side. 1852-1857

The coming of the railway 1837-1847

The enclosures of St. John’s Common: reflection