Why Burgess Hill’s heritage has been overlooked

Antiquarian’ interest in local history burgeoned during the 19^th century and much was written on the charming villages of mid Sussex. The historians of the day were usually gentlemen of sufficient means to allow them time to read, research and write.  But these authors passed our workaday brick, tile and pottery town by. This meant that, excepting the celebrated Hammonds Place, the many lovely old farmhouses of historic interest dotted around our urban area were overlooked along with the rest of Burgess Hill. They and their desirable acres later became easy fodder for the developers and there are now only a handful of early timber-framed buildings left. Not only they, but the large 17^th century brick-built house at Burgess Hill Farm’, a fine product of its own brick and tile manufacturing side-line, was also gobbled up in the 1950s to make way for the Chanctonbury Road housing development.

In the photo below, it is of interest to see the interior of a brick-built house. Although wood was no longer providing its weight-bearing structure, there was still plenty of interior work to keep for carpenters in business: the spars to support wall coverings, the need for floor boards and doorways, and the usual hefty timbers for roof support.

Some of the late farm’s rural features, hedgerows and pockets of woodland have survived to the present day. There are two pockets of woodland in the Chanctonbury Road area, both shown on a map of the farm created in 1631 when it was owned by a son of John Rowe, high steward of the Earl of Abergavenny, a major manorial overlord locally. A small pasture field, now adjacent to the railway line, was also depicted on the 1631 map and called Little Cow Field on a map of 1819). It was dissected by the railway circa 1840 and its west part is currently in use as allotments. However, despite the recent vigorous protests of allotment holders and others, the allotments are destined soon to be built over. This is acknowledged as regrettable, but it is none the less promoted as a ‘good thing’ because it will bring in the funds to finance our much-needed main-line station improvements. The ‘packaging’ of a painful loss with a desired outcome is a common feature of modern planning.  It sugars the pill, but at the end of the day, a heritage loss is a heritage loss and is irrecoverable. We do hope, however, to get the western hedge preserved, where nature has been undisturbed and trees have been maturing since the cessation of active hedge management in the 1950s.

The images below show: First, Burgess Hill farm at demolition. It was built circa 1660 and replaced a medieval timber-framed house. Second, ‘Open space’ off Holmesdale Road, and third, the west hedge of the allotments field.

Between 1650 and 1720 there were no less than eight small independent brick and tile manufacturers in St. John’s Common, six of them with kilns.  As well as supplying brick and tile to outlying customers, they built cottages to house the new working families who came into the area work in their yards, and the structure of these cottages was entirely of brick. They were not building in the traditional way by making the weight-bearing frame of the building in timber.  Why would they? It had become fashionable for the well-off to build entirely in brick. The brickmakers’ customers, such as Edward Luxford at Ockley, also wanted a fashionable brick structure. was I. was entirely logical for the brick makers to replicate the model for themselves on a smaller scale. But no Sussex historian of the time would have been the least bit interested in a 17^th century worker’s cottage made of brick. It would have looked indistinguishable from myriads of 19th century workers cottages and unworthy of comment.

These houses would be of great interest today, were they to have survived, as proto-types, a new modern approach when people in the surrounding rural areas were generally still building with timber. All but one of these cottages have been pulled down, mistaken as 19^th century brick structures of no particular interest and swept away. This is a great loss.  A few photos do survive of some that have been demolished and the one which does still stand, which had been built by 1675. At the other end of the scale, too many of the former Victorian houses on the hill of Burgess Hill and elsewhere in the town have also disappeared. Often their only memorial is that the block of flats now standing on the site still carries their name.

Another factor that has led to a general lack of awareness about some of our buildings of interest is that they are often hidden, surrounded by modern housing.  This has arisen from the haphazard way that enclosed common land tends to develop.  For example, one purchaser of land at the 1828 Keymer enclosure was farmer John Ellman of Glynde, eminent in Sussex during his lifetime for selectively breeding sheep to create the famous ‘Southdown’ variety. He and his successors hung on to their new land at St John’s Common as pasture, while a couple of near neighbours did not. Up went Victorian villas on their plots. And when Ellman’s former land finally came on the market it was 1960s style bungalows that were built there.  It makes the story of Burgess Hill’s architectural history difficult to construe and no one from outside the town has ever really bothered to unpick what could be a fascinating story.

The following images show: First, the brick-built Woolgar’s cottages which once stood in the Meeds brickyard in Station Road. Second, late-17^th century brick cottage with Victorian extension on the right. Third,  juxtaposition of Victorian and 1950s architecture in Mill Road.

Architectural guides are published specifically to direct people to buildings of merit in a place. One of the most famous is the ‘Pevsner Architectural Guides’.  But the formulaic approach of this standard ‘bible’, in which the text mainly concerns the town centre, is to the great disadvantage of places like Burgess Hill. Both the original edition and the recently revised edition for West Sussex, edited by Elizabeth Williamson, have failed us. This was not the editor’s fault. I had collaborated with her and supplied her with details of our remaining early houses of merit, including the 1675 brick cottage, but she was not allowed to include them.  It was the model on which the Survey’s evaluation was rigidly constructed.  Only the Town Centre buildings were to be considered in detail, plus the churches.

For most settlements this approach works, as they grow from the centre out. For a town which has imploded, with its centre in an open common, it absolutely fails to work – both for Burgess Hill and for Haywards Heath, another implosion into an open common.  It has allowed the good timber framed farmhouses, and other early buildings of merit around the edges of the old commons in both communities to be ignored. The long line of Victorian mansions in Keymer Road, from ‘Burgess Hill Girls’ school to Hilgay, was not discussed.  This haze of ignorance in two important towns of Mid Sussex, each with its station(s) on a major rail link to London, made it too easy for developers to demolish the sprawling old farmhouses which stood in the way of a mission to squeeze every last penny out of the development site. 

This state of blindness to our specific type of development has led to the loss of several timber-framed houses. In the 1970s, after the timber-framed Leylands farm had been pulled down, our Local History Society tried but failed to save Sheddingdean Farmhouse. It had stood derelict in limbo, for a long time in the 1970s until one day, as we cynically supposed, the contractor accidently tripped over it with his heavy machinery, and it was gone. Both of these farms used to lie just north of Leylands Road. Soon after this, however, we and its enthusiastic owner, helped to save Chapel ‘Farm’ (our former medieval chapel) on Fairplace Hill. Next up, in the 1980s, West End Farm and all its land was sold for housing. But, through liaising with the developers, we and the then Town Council together were able to save the old farm house, which is now the Woolpack public house. Sadly though, in 2012 there was the closure of the King’s Head Pub, a former inn at the hub of the Midsummer sheep fairs, a coaching stop and local meeting place. The building’s 19^th-century frontage masked its 17^th century core, which was still in good shape. In 2013, I watched, and caught with my camera, as the old wattles were pulled out of the walls of the earlier wing.

Earlier losses were Povey’s Farm alias Beddells (1950s, now Southway School) and Bedelands Farm (1960s) in the Bedelands Nature Reserve. These were the homes of the manorial beadles, who had collected cottage rents and pinned up notices of forthcoming meetings on church doors in Clayton and Keymer manors respectively, as a condition of their tenancies. In 2021 we lost Bridge Hall Farm, a significant timber-framed house, rebuilt in the early 16^th century house, with additional brick wings and a beautiful Victorian portico. As a dwelling place it was ancient. It was our earliest recorded home – where Osbert of Stuttesford lived in the 1250s.  Its architectural worth and its place in the history of this town were completely overlooked by us all until it was too late.

The images below show: First, Sheddingdean farm standing derelict in the 1970s. Second, the rescue of the old roof tiles at the King’s Head in 2013 (for the value of their re-sale price), and third, Bridge Hall from the west, looking across the development site.

For more information about the medieval chapel on Fairplace Hill and of Bridge Hall go to Burgess Hill’s name  and for information on the enclosures of the Commons, see Birth of the Town.