Burgess Hill’s name:

By Heather Warne

Our town’s name relates to the hill-top or ‘burgh’ above Burgess Hill’s main railway station. The Top House inn and the former ‘Hoadleys’ department store’ (recently a bedding shop) lie on this slight rise at the northern end of the elevated ridge of land called ‘Frekebergh’ (see, origins and settlement and farming). Because Frekebergh was an early hunting chase, the farmers living nearby needed high fences, or ‘hays’, to protect their lands from deer. The former farm just west of the railway station, Burgess Hill Farm, encapsulates in its name the statement of its location: ‘[at] the hill’s high hedges’. In the early 1600s the farm was also known as ‘Hatchers’ which implies the upkeep of a hatch gate through a high deer fence. The ‘hatch’ place- name similarly occurs at many ‘gates’ in and out, all around the Ashdown Forest.

The local list of King’s taxes in 1296, 1327 and 1332 include mention of one John Burgeys in Keymer manor, among other surnames relating to what is now Burgess Hill, as discussed in the Origins of Settlement and farming article.  This surname is ‘toponymic’, probably from Old English beorg – hill and heag a hedge.  The fact that the perimeter hedges of the great wood of Frekebergh swung west down the hill at Burgess Hill, to include the area of Grove Road and contingent land further north, means that they were the prominent landscape feature which defined the location of the adjacent farmland.  The surname Burgeys is not, in this instance, connected with a burgess of a town or borough. The name Haywards Heath also comes from the same word haeg, combined with the word worth (describing the farming enclosure Great Haywards) together with the old word for ‘heath’.

It is worth mentioning that what we now call Burgess Hill farm was actually an amalgam of two early farms, the other called Founte land, that is, ‘land of the spring’. I believe it to refer to the source of the Pookbourne Stream which waters the meadows later called Oakmeeds , now the grounds of Burgess Hill Academy; and that the low-lying pond within the Oakhall housing estate may indicate the approximate site of the old farmstead of Founteland. The stream name means Puck’s stream, ‘puck’ being an old Sussex dialect word for ‘fairy’ or goblin.  The main watermill of Keymer manor lay under the Downs in Underhill Lane. Its earliest recorded name was ‘Poukepool’. The spring-fed pool is still there, very deep and steep and a bit spooky – as the name ‘puck’ infers – but the mill has long gone, made redundant by wind power up on Jack and Jill’s hill nearby.

It is entirely possible that the very top of the hill, had once been a ‘moot’ or meeting place for tenants of the manor of Keymer in early times.  In Earlier History, The problem of the poor, I discuss a parish meeting in 1793 which took place at the inn there, which would have been a forerunner of today’s Top House.  It was a central and convenient place in a parish which stretched from high on the Downs above Keymer village, up to Burgess Hill and continued on as far as Ashenground Road in Haywards Heath. There is no reason why the same arrangement would not have held good in earlier times for the manor of Keymer, which covered the same area and also had nearly half its tenants living even further north in what is now the parish of Balcombe, with further outliers at Crabbett, Tinsley Green and Copthorne in Worth parish.

I have peered over the back fence of the Top House car park and found a spring-fed pond there, essential for ‘watering’ people and their animals who had travelled some distance to attend a meeting. A tenant of Keymer manor in 1343 had the surname Mot (pronounced moot) and there was an early cottage a short distance away on the west side of Keymer Road abutting on the farmland of Burgess Hill farm, where he perhaps lived. In the 17^th century and later it was known as ‘Lotmot’s.

An alternative explanation of the Burg- part of the name Burgess Hill is that it did not develop from Old English beorg, rounded hill, but from burh, meaning ‘hill with earthworks’. This need not infer a prehistoric ‘fort’ for defence purposes but simply the fact of a ‘moot’. Old open-air meeting places were often marked by a perimeter bank, or banks, to identify its importance or to separate the court officials from the general tenantry.  At the southern end of this high ridge of land is Lodge Hill, off Lodge Lane in Ditchling. There are slight circular earthworks on the top of Lodge Hill which are believed to relate to the ‘moot mound’ once known as Swanborough (Soanberge – ‘the people’s hill, in AD 1086). Our meeting place, if it existed, would just have been for the tenants of the manor of Keymer, whereas the older one at Lodge Hill would have been a ‘folk moot’ drawing in all landholders in Ditchling’s vast territory throughout much of what is now the Mid Susssex area.

At Burgess Hill the Ordnance Survey contour lines show the hill -top as a perfect circle at approximately 66 metres above sea level. I have also noticed that there are several yew trees growing in immediate the area, and that the old farm in Grove Road used to be called Yew Tree farm. Yews can be indicators of old meeting places because they provided a focal point and shelter from the weather.

This group of photos shows:

First, contour map traced from a modern Ordnance survey map, showing the perfect circle in the Top House – Hoadleys area.  Second – the view from top of town, and third Oakhall pond, possibly indicative of the location of the ‘lost’ homestead of Fountelond.

Map key: Purple/red highest land, through yellow – lower land, to stream valleys – blue

All the centre of Burgess Hill grew out of an area of common grazing land known, from the 17th century onwards, as St. John’s Common.  It seems an anomaly that the town is not called St. John’s Common today, but in 1843 the cutting of the railway station into the side of the hill, brought that area into general recognition. Both names battled it out for a century. The St. John’s Common and Burgess Hill Gas Company, for example, still functioned under both names as late as 1949. However, as the influential people of the town more generally chose to live on the hill, its name gained ascendancy.

The name ‘St. John’s’ reflects the ancient sheep and lamb fair which was held every midsummer on the north side of the common on St. John the Baptist day, June 24^th.  Many places in England have, or once had, ‘Midsummer’ fairs and it is now believed that some of them date back to prehistory. Ours may have functioned at least in the late Saxon period. When the manors of Clayton and Keymer were created in the 10^th-century or thereabouts, the boundary between the two ran through the ‘Fair Place’ area. The usual reason for early boundary decisions of this nature is that the land so divided was a valued pre-existing asset, to be shared between each new community.  The name Fairplace Hill thus derives from its proximity to the fairs, not for being beautiful – though indeed it may have been!

The earliest written reference to the midsummer fair ‘at Stottesforde on St. John the Baptist’s Day (24^th June) is in a Ditchling manor court roll for the year 1343. A Ditchling tenant called John Ketel (?an occupational surname relating to kettles or cooking pots) had been accused by one Thomas Clerc (perhaps the clerk of the fair) of bringing an yncer to the 1342 fair without having paid his ‘toll’, or trading licence. Clerk (or perhaps we should say ‘the clerk’ – meaning clerk of the Fair) then confiscated the item.   John Ketel had to wait until a court held the following year to explain his complaint against Clerc and make his defence. His evidence makes it clear that some sort of cooking pot or brewing vessel is meant by the word yncer.  He explained that he had been asked by the Lord of the manor to bring it as part of the catering arrangements for the day; and that it was quite unjustified for it to be confiscated. It had caused great inconvenience all round.  Thomas Clerc was therefore summoned to come and explain himself at the next Ditchling court, which he did. The tenants who had formed the jury of peers at that court found in favour of Ketel and Clerc was ordered to give the pot back and pay a fine for his false accusation.   (For yncer, see notes below). There is more in the ‘Earlier History’ article on ‘Community’ as to what courts the local tenantry had to attend and what role they played.

The record of this incident is ‘gold dust’ for Burgess Hill’s history for we would otherwise have no actual early mention of the St. John’s fair.  There are passing references in Lewes Barony accounts of 1400, 1466 and 1481to the tolls or profits of the fair, and its associated ‘wakes’ at St. John’s Chapel (below). The next mention we have found for the St. John’s fair was in the 17^th century when there was a dispute centred on a beer tent there.  Both occasions give us a rare glimpse behind the scenes and remind us that a large gathering in the medieval period had to cater for much the same human needs as in modern times. The reason we have to rely on glimpses, rather than full records is because the St. John’s Fair was owned directly by the earls of the Barony of Lewes. We can find some references to their granting out of local fairs elsewhere, but even these are not always the date that the fair in question was created. It was more-often that that the de Warennes were handing over the rights to the profits of the fair to a lesser lord to pocket for himself from then on. Records are not always what they seem to be at face value.

The office of the clerk of the fair continued down the centuries and was held in the late 1800s by our earliest historian, C.D. Meads who wrote under the pseudonym, Historicus.  The 17^th-century Clayton manor records tell us that a handful of cottages had recently been built outside the southern end of the fair ground in the vicinity of London Road and West Street. The Clayton parish tithe map of 1841 also shows that there was also a long rectangular enclosure with buildings on it  on the west side of the fair place. This may have been used to store the wattles and other equipment for the fairs. There is a rectangular structure still standing on the field of the sheep fairs at Findon, north of Worthing, which was for storage wattles. These were sections of split coppice wood, woven into portable fences and used to erect temporary sheep pens for the actual sales.

I notice that today, the access track into the fair ground from the north, at the bend in Fairfield Road, is called Toll Gate. The Clayton parish tithe map of 1841 shows a small building in its own plot of land here, within the fair place area. It perhaps housed the old toll booth and cottage of the clerk of the fair.  It is worth mentioning that the surname Fairhall, evolving often as Ferrall or Verrall, is common in this part of Sussex and probably derives from medieval ‘fair hall’, a building connected with this aspect of administration of the old Sussex fairs.

The images show:

CD Meads and his sister on the old site of the medieval sheep fairs.

Sheep at Worlds End, presumably returning from the Fair.

Stuttesford or Stottesford’ was St. John’s Common’s earliest name, the common being named from the important adjacent river crossing at the bottom of Fairplace Hill. Stot was the old name for a heavy working horse or a pack horse and the hill was part of a long -distance route from the south coast towards London – now known as the London Road as it runs through the town.  Another ancient route, a cross-Wealden track of possible Iron Age origin (see notes below), came up from Ditchling village via Lodge Hill and Keymer Road. On reaching St. John’s Common around the area of Burgess Hill Station, it went diagonally NW straight across the open common, heading for Fairplace Hill, in order to use the same river crossing. The Enclosure plan plainly shows its northern end tracking down at the back of the old King’s Head Inn and I remember seeing it as a hedged lane before it was ‘lost’ by being taken into a private garden in Leylands Road. I have marked the approximate course of the lost road across the common on the illustration of the Keymer Enclosure Plan in the linked Town History article on the ‘Extinction of the Keymer Commons’.

The small hamlet around the top of the hill, generally known as Fair Place in the medieval period and later, had an ale house, or inn and a smithy, as well as its own chapel. It. was a proper rural hamlet, offering the important services of cider, ale and horse shoes to passing travellers. On the south side of the old pub, once called the Unicorn, evolving as the King’s Head, there was a 2-acre apple orchard, a common feature locally, providing home-made cider.

The junction of the two roads was approximately opposite no. 75 London Road today. They would both have been busy with horse traffic of all sorts. Once over the river they continued on their separate courses, the cross-Wealden track from Ditchling carrying on to Ansty and on via Deakes Lane to Handcross. The ‘manorial drove route from Stonepound in Hassocks tracked up via Isaacs Lane to Chownes Mead at Haywards Heath and on to outlying land of Keymer manor in the northern Weald. Their V-shaped divide is still a strong feature in the modern landscape.

Half way down the hill on its east side was the St. John’s Chapel, dedicated to St. John the Baptist because it was used for the ‘wakes’ and processions during the 3-day festival of Midsummer (the eve, the day itself and the morrow) in association with the sheep fairs. It was probably also used at some other times of the year but the main churches for the people of St. John’s Common were those in the villages of Clayton or Keymer. See Church and Chapel.

King Henry VIII’s main ‘Reformation’ in 1536, by which he did away with all monasteries, abbeys and priories was followed by another act in 1545 which suppressed all chapels and chantries which might provide a place of worship or an income stream to the Roman Catholics. This act included our chapel of St John which is mentioned by name in the associated documentation. It was a dependency of the recently-dissolved Lewes Priory. Like the Fair Place, the 5-acre Chapel site had been shared out in the ?10^th century between the new manors of Clayton and Keymer; a division which put the chapel itself in Keymer and the dwelling of a ‘chapel man’ (who presumably looked after the place) in Clayton. ‘Chapel Cottages’ now stand on his plot. One feels therefore that the 5-acre site, which had its own spring, could have been a pre-existing holy place, perhaps associated with St. John the Baptist himself. There is also a chalybeate (iron bearing) spring on a similar latitude over the main road at no. 75, according to former owner, the late Don Weller who was a member of our Association. These springs were sought out for their medicinal properties.

Many outlying areas of Sussex manors obtained their own chapel as local population grew. For example, Wivelsfield church, despite its Anglo-Saxon origin, was still just a ‘chapel’ of Ditchling in the 1500s. Wivelsfield people then fought for their church’s independence and were successful, probably on the grounds that it was paying its own tithes. Our chapel did not have so much clout. Keymer Church itself was a chapel of Clayton and our chapel of St. John was another rung down the ladder. Nine years after the main reformation it was decommissioned under the 1545 Act.   It was de-consecrated and converted into an ordinary cottage held of the manor of Keymer and it survives today under the name Chapel Farm.

And so, we lost our earlier opportunity to become an independent parish of ‘St John’, and had to wait until 1863 for another chance. But at least its name was perpetuated. Sad for its loss as a place of worship, local people will have carried on fondly recalling their old St. John’s and in time the whole common came to be known as ‘St. John’s’ The older names remained in official use for another hundred years or more as ‘Studford’, ‘Starford’ or ‘Starford Heath alias St. John’s’. But gradually, in common parlance, the older names gradually died out altogether and we became St. John’s Common.

The earliest record for the ford over the river at the bottom of Fairplace Hill was recorded in a 1266 in the name of one Osbert of Stuttesford who was backing a fellow suitor to the Barony in a dispute about an ox.  His family surname derives from the adjacent ford for heavy horses or pack horses (stots). It is this land at the ford, and the responsibilities he would have had in its upkeep that entitled him to attend that elevated court. His home qualified him as one of the principal freeholders of Mid Sussex, a select group of people on whose ‘counsel and service’ the Lords of the Barony, the Earls de Warenne, relied. I suspect that his greatest duty of care was to the upkeep of the Earls’ private fishery there, known as the ‘fishery of Stottesford’ which stretched from the Eight Arches area at Valebridge to this ford and perhaps beyond.

The Stottesford surname died out locally in 1393 when three daughters became its heirs. Thomas Holcombe, the husband of one daughter, bought the others out. A bridge eventually replaced the ford, first mentioned in 1531 in title deeds as Stutfordes Brugge. In 1702 it was ‘St. John’s Bridge sometime called Stutford Bridge’ and it was later described as a ‘horse bridge’, keeping up the old pack-horse tradition. But in 1709 the local Quarter Sessions court ordered that it be replaced by a ‘wayne [waggon] bridge’ for the benefit of all users.

The adjacent early house came to be known as Bridge Hall, probably during the 16^th century. Sadly, in recent decades nobody had thought to ‘list’ this timber framed family home of the de Stottesforde’s which was perhaps, at heart, our town’s oldest domestic structure. It came under Anstye and Staplefield Planning area, not Burgess Hill, so we missed the (carefully-understated) demolition application. Despite some very strong last-ditch protests locally, the house was pulled down in 2021. The ancient oaks on the site were uprooted and disposed of and it is now a small housing estate.

As well as St. John’s common, there was a second large manorial common in Keymer, called Valebridge Common on the north east side of modern Burgess Hill. It was a long triangular shape like a wedge of cheese. At the slim southern tip of the wedge is the Watermill public house in the area now known as Worlds End. This is a name that came in with the railway builders, either from their poor opinion of the district or possibly from the actual completion of the track. This was built in chalk up from Brighton and in other materials down from Haywards Heath. What had been the labourers’ world for years had come to an end. We should each pick our preferred explanation!

The following images show: Chapel Farm; Bridge Hall standing derelict and the geography of Burgess Hill from Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol.123, “The early place-names of Burgess Hill”.

As early as the 17^th century this end of the common had become something of a hub with a few small farms, several small cottages and a poor house dotted around. In the 18^th and early 19^th century this scattered community was simply known as Valebridge. The wedge spreads out northwards, gradually at first, then broadening to a fat hammer head on both sides of the railway north of the Eight Arches Viaduct. The celebrated wildflower area of Bedelands Nature Reserve known as ‘Coronation Meadow’ is part of the old common. The earliest record I have found for the name Valebridge is in 1530. However, there is a dearth of medieval records for the area and the name could be much older than that.  It indicates a road bridge over the vale or valley of the River Adur, perhaps where the modern road now runs hard by the east flank of the railway viaduct.

The small adjacent pond at the housing development, ‘Jesters’, used to belong to an old water mill in the Theobalds estate in the parish of Wivelsfield. It was defunct by 1607 which is the date when Edmund Attree, the then owner of Theobalds in Theobalds Road and lord of a part of Keymer manor, flooded 6 acres of Valebridge Common to create what we now know as Valebridge Mill Pond. It was a corn mill, helping to feed the growing local populace.  He was not popular with the commoners who complained about loss of pasturage for their cattle. Even worse, when he built a windmill on the common (where the cul-de-sac The Nursery has since been developed), it was the last straw. Their cattle were clearly in danger from being hit by the sails (or sweeps as they are known locally). The windmill did not last very long, it seems.

The information given here is reduced from my article published in SAC vol. 123 (1985), pp.127-144, which gives fuller details of the subjects mentioned in this synopsis for the web site. John Burgeys, whose surname derives from Burgess Hill itself, is mentioned in 1296 in SRS vol. 10 and Osbert of Stuttesford, 1266, in the Barony of Lewes records, SRS vol. 44. The SAC and the SRS series are now available on line; printed copies for research on site are at Burgess Hill Library and Haywards Heath Library respectively.

For the various meanings of burh as well as beorg and the confusions between them, see A. H. Smith, English Place-name elements, (C.U.P. 1987); also Margaret Gelling and A. Cole, The Landscape of Place names, Chapter 5.

Concerning the fair: although the word yncer (and possible variants) is not in the ‘Medieval Latin Word List (which is an O.U.P. ‘work-in-progress’ dictionary of words found and continuing to be found in medieval texts) the context implies that it would have been a vessel of some sort for cooking or for preparing drinks.

Re. the Iron Age track: Ivan Margary, the Roman roads expert, published a short article entitled: An early trans-wealden trackway in Sussex Notes and Queries (SNQ), vol. 11, pp. 62-64. It traced the route of an Iron Age track south westwards from Biggin Hill in Kent, across the Weald to Ditchling. As discussed in 1 above, Ditchling was a regional ‘capital’ in the Saxon period and this track indicates it may have been an important place before the Romans came to Britain. Having learnt of this track I immediately wondered whether there was a similar track going south eastwards across the Weald to Ditchling. It didn’t take long to pick an obvious early trail which was entirely unconnected with ‘transhumance’, that is, the practice of taking one’s animals up and down to out-pastures in the Weald. It comes diagonally from Handcross to Ansty via Staplefield and Deakes Lane, crossing the Adur by the ‘Stottes’ ford’ at the bottom of Fairplace Hill, where it diverged south east from the London Road, along the back of the smithy and the (King’s Head) inn, to cut right across the Common to Burgess Hill, then down to Ditchling via Keymer Road and Lodge Hill. Going in the other direction, north-west from Ditchling, I think that the ultimate destination(s) of the track could have been both Kingston upon Thames from which, by water various options might open up and Southwark on the south bank, which was the older settlement on the Thames. Handcross was a hub of alternative routes and there were other main routes due north to the London area. Although I’ve included the detective work about the IA track in my lectures, I’ve not yet written it up!