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by Heather Warne

With additional material by Martin Hayes, Local Studies Officer for West Sussex County Libraries.

Maps are a great window into the past. The first Ordnance Survey was published in a one-inch series in the first decade of the 19th century when fear of French invasion was rising. These earliest Ordnance surveyors’ drawings show the Mid-Sussex area in the 1790s and early 1800s and can be viewed at the British Library  More detailed OS sheets were published in the 1870s, 1890s, 1909-14, 1930s/402 and post 1950. The 6 inch series is useful in that it shows individual field and property boundaries and are very useful for plotting the bounds of older maps and other data, because it is easy to correlate the information with the modern scene. The 25 inch series is able to carry a little more detail and it is easier to see drives, barns, outbuildings and other small details.

These maps make it easy to continue with comparisons of housing growth. You can find a digital version of these maps at the National Library of Scotland

If you would like to do further documentary research for yourself, the surveyors’ note books which accompany the 25 inch maps, and the maps themselves, are held at the British Library (adjacent to St. Pancras International Station and easy to access from Burgess Hill via the Thameslink stop there). You need a Reader’s Pass to use the BL Reading Room. East and West Sussex Record Offices at Falmer and Chichester also have sets of the maps.

Further key sources useful in tracing the growth of Burgess Hill between 1840 and 1880 and beyond are i) Sussex census returns,  ii) Sussex Trades Directories   iii) Various Sussex newspapers. iv) maps (see above). These can all be studied on line and at the two County Record Offices: The Keep at Falmer near Brighton and West Sussex Record Office at Chichester. Don’t forget that historically our area used to be part of East Sussex until 1974 and that the greater part of our history belongs to that County. After 1974 most of our old records were transferred to Chichester, but not all. It is worth checking out to see if The Keep at Falmer holds what you want, as it is only 9 miles away rather than 39 to Chichester! You can get to it by train from Burgess Hill via Brighton. For the Record Offices you need a reader’s card but they will issue one on arrival if you take ID and proof of address.

Published sources you can study at Burgess Hill Library are the collected books and articles in the Local Studies Section has a limited selection of material which you need to read at the Library rather than borrow. Between 1840 and 1914 Burgess Hill changed from a rural society with a brick and tile industry at its heart, to a rambling, but socially coherent small country town. Useful books include

Dr, B. Short (ed.), A Very Improving Neighbourhood: Burgess Hill 1840-1914 (Univ. Sussex, 1984).

A.H. Gregory Burgess Hill Through the Ages (Charles Clarke, 1933)

A.H. Gregory Mid-Sussex Through the Ages (Charles Clarke, 1938)

You can also search the West Sussex Libraries online catalogue for many more books on Burgess Hill and Mid-Sussex history:

If you are a member of your local library, all 36 West Sussex public libraries provide free access to the British Newspaper archive via the Elibrary. The Mid-Sussex Times is available on the BNA from 1881 to 1945 (lacks 1889) and 1946 to 2016 is on microfilm at Crawley Library. The MST from 2017 to date is available as hi-res pdfs at Burgess Hill Library.

There are also plans to digitise town (also called ‘street’) directories, including those for Mid-Sussex. During 2023 Mid Sussex (Charles Clarke) Directories for the years 1884-1885, 1914-1915, 1938, 1955-1956 will be made available on all the public access computers in West Sussex libraries.

For further information, please contact the West Sussex Libraries Enquiry Team or enquire at the Burgess Hill Library.