A handful of Burgess Hill’s historic events

The worst calamity that had happened on the Brighton railway since the fearful disaster that had happened in Clayton Tunnel in 1861.
That is how the Mid Sussex Times reported it at the time. The article goes on to describe a terrible collision at 6:14pm in the evening in thick fog. The Continental boat train up from Newhaven had just joined the main line, having slowly negotiated the curve of the tracks at the junction, and finding the main line signals against him, the driver pulled up just a few yards north of Wivelsfield Station. The 5:45pm pullman going north from Brighton to London on the main line was scheduled to be in front of the boat train, but it was late and, for that reason, was going at top speed. Because of the fog its driver was completely unaware of the stationary train ahead and he ploughed into the back of it, causing, in the Middy reporter’s words, “an awful wreckage and a piteous spectacle of maimed and mutilated humanity”

The engine of the pullman train left the rails on impact and fell on its side. Some of the carriages started sliding down the embankment. Others caught alight. Further carnage was prevented by a telephone call up the line from the ‘Wivelsfield’ (Keymer Junction) signal box, which managed to get the next down train stopped at Haywards Heath. Groping their way through the fog, rescuers found themselves staggering among broken glass, bent iron, wheels, splintered wood……. People poured from their houses in wonderment as to what had happened and helped the railway officials…As if by magic, doctors arrived from Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath, Hurstpierpoint, Brighton and Hove. The reverend W. R. Tindall Atkinson, vicar of St. Andrew’s Church did valuable work as interpreter for some of the passengers on the boat train. Stretcher parties were formed for the injured who were first laid out in the station waiting room and were then transferred either to the Sussex County Hospital in Brighton or to Guy’s Hospital in London.

The article goes on to describe some sad personal tales of loss, affecting people from both trains. An Italian gentleman who had lost his life was given a Roman Catholic burial in St. John’s Churchyard. Inquests were held in London and Burgess Hill and the issues are covered in a following article. There were decisions about culpability and whether a ‘fogman’ should have been engaged and some individuals were named as negligent, but the general consensus was that: ….the stations, signal boxes etc. at Burgess Hill and Wivelsfield were under-staffed; and …the Company’s arrangements were insufficient to meet the emergency of a sudden fog.

Accidental death was the juries’ verdicts regarding those who had regrettably lost their lives.

The following images show: First, a view south at the junction of the Lewes line and the Brighton main line, showing the old signal box. Second, Wivelsfield Station with a passing steam train showing the old Waiting Rooms where the injured were taken. Third, the view of the embankment and the north part of the station (which straddles the road) taken from the corner of Janes Lane & Valebridge Road.

For a brief note on John Saxby’s invention designed to prevent junction accidents, see ‘Royal Visits’. below – The Green Circle, 2017.

Full reports of the accident can be read on pages 22-23 of A. H. Gregory, The Story of Burgess Hill  (Charles Clarke, 1933) and the main photograph, taken by A. Carver, is on page 313 of  Mid Sussex Through the Ages (1938) by the same author and publisher. The Wivelsfield Folk-Rock Group, Touchstone, run by Mark Orchin, wrote and often perform their own song about the disaster.

Under our old name, Burgess Hill Local History Society, we used to produce a journal of short articles in the 1980s. Rose Powell, who died in the Autumn of 2021, having just reached the age of 100, was its editor in the year of the Great Storm and she decided to do a collage of people’s recollections of that terrifying night and its aftermath in Journal no. 5, December 1988. The abridged excerpts published here will perhaps jog your memory if you were also in Burgess Hill at the time. And for those of you too young to remember, or living elsewhere at the time, here’s what it was like.

Several of the accounts finish with comments on the state of the town the next day, with people walking round in a daze of disbelief. There were expressions of sorrow at the extent of the damage, especially the fallen trees along the town side of St. John’s Park. There was also relief that St. John’s Church spire had survived and much sympathy for the local birds and wildlife who were out in the thick of it and who may have lost their places of shelter.

Who was living towards the top part of Junction Road: “At about 2 in the morning I was woken by a howling wind which seemed to become more fierce by the minute. Within half an hour I heard sounds of terra-cotta breaking…the wind was battering against the south-facing gable of my house and at each gust I thought the bathroom window would be blown in at any minute. My heart rate doubled. By 3 o’clock I contemplated moving my sleeping family to the lounge in case part of the roof or chimney stack should collapse”.

Fred then joined his brother (who lives next door) and together, having difficulty to stand upright at all, he found: “the chimney pot from next door had been blown to the ground and smashed, my roof tiles had lifted and a ridge tile was missing. I could see even more damage to the roofs of the cottages opposite and in some cases half the roof had been torn away”

A large shop awning had landed in Fred’s front garden, which Peggy Payton’s daughter (living a little higher up the hill) had seen flying past her bedroom window at about 100 miles an hour. It had come from the sunblind shop at the top of the hill.

Who was then widow of the former Burgess Hill Town Clerk, lived higher up, in Cleveland Gardens.  She recalled: “I awakened to a bewilderment of whistling wind, crashes and thuds. After hearing a number of objects hit my front door I decided, quite illogically, that I would be safer in my small back bedroom, so I groped my way thither [there was no power] and with some trepidation pulled back the curtain to see what was going on. Immediately before me were the steep tree-lined banks of the railway line. The young and slender trees were bent over at right angles from half way up their trunks and streamed in the wind, a sight I had never seen before. As I looked over our town dropping away before me, I could see that some areas still had their lights. I then realized that my fences were down on both sides and that my garden shed was not where it should have been.  How it had gone walkabout when full of garden tools and a lawn mower was beyond me”.

From her eagle’s nest in Wynnstay flats looked out over the town the next morning, “… and it reminded me of a ghost town. I could see one solitary light away in the distance. The railway station was deserted and the usual sound of the trains was noticeable by its absence”.

In her editorial recalls that “in addition to the howling wind there was a great clangour of newly-emptied dustbins careering at full tilt along Royal George Road, followed by a rattling rabble of milk bottles clanging along in their rear.” (metal bins in those days and glass milk bottles) Like others, she was concerned about the birds and other wildlife made homeless by so many falling trees.

Who lived at 73 London Road, on Fairplace Hill, had travelled back from Yorkshire that day and Val was sleeping so soundly at 3am when Don had woken up to crashing noises, that he went back as well. But, “… about 5am my wife is shouting for us all to get up: – there are holes in the roof, all the flashings are missing from the bathroom, part of the stable roof has blown away, a tree is down, no light, the weather vane has vanished, chimney pots are moving about and bits are falling off and slates are embedded in the lawn.  By now my wife is making more noise than the storm”, he recalls.

There were also articles about the north of the town by Joyce Grainger (Woodland Avenue), Yenny Snider, and Joan Matthews (both in Leylands Road) and by Ann Phillips of Coopers Close; and poems by M. C. Longbone and ‘E.F.U. (Eileen Upton) and two more by 9-year-olds Keith Howell and Martin Holland. Our former chairman Bob Chimley also described the scene in Hassocks where they had to cope without electricity for the next 12 days.

The following images show: First the pine trees at the east end of the St John’s Park. Second, Wynnstay (now replaced by Wynnstay flats), ably illustrating how Rosalind Browning could see all over the town. Third, Don Weller’s old house

Since 1973 there have been 5 Royal visits to Burgess Hill. In that year Princess Anne came to open the new Town Centre office block which had become the headquarters for “Van Den Burghs”, the margarine producers. American Express later took the premises over and, after a recent revamp to the building, they are still there.

The late Princess Diana opened the “Disabled Housing Trust” in Nov 1985 a small complex of wheelchair-friendly bungalows off Maple Drive, to house disabled members of the community.  She landed by helicopter on the playing fields by the town Football Pitch and walked along Maple Drive to the new development (opposite the Co-op), followed by a throng of local people, mainly local Mums and their younger children, all eager to catch a glimpse.  Regrettably the facility closed in 2019. and the disabled were moved elsewhere.

On 4^th December of the following year Princess Anne opened the “Charles of the Ritz” factory on the main factory estate. The next Royal event was the visit on 29th March 1999 when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh who opened the “Triangle Leisure Centre” and afterwards visited Burgess Hill Town Council’s new “Help Point”.

Finally, on 2^nd October 2017, Richard, Duke of Gloucester opened the modern-art installations around the Green Circle on the west and south of the Town. and the sculptures at Bedelands Nature Reserve on the north. Sir Nicholas Soames, then the Member of Parliament for Mid Sussex, was in attendance as well as the artists themselves and various representatives of the local community.

Mini-buses helped the party get round to the various installations, where each artist was able to talk about their designs and the inspiration for them.  Helena Roden had commemorated Emily Temple (died 1874) in steel and resin while Alan Potter had depicted John ‘Bee’ Mason’s life in mosaic form.

“Saxby’s Halt” in steel by artist Jon Mills celebrated the ‘point lock’, the railway signalling system invented by engineer John Saxby. His invention was inspired while he was in the ‘Bricklayers Arms’ near London Bridge Station considering a previous ‘near miss’ there, and after two and a half years in development, the first trial of his system was at Keymer Junction. His invention prevents the points being changed until a train has finished passing over them.

John Saxby was a local man who had lived at “Coldharbour”, Wivelsfield Green and later moved to Hassocks were he died in 1913 aged 91. He is burried at St John the Baptist, Wivelfield. There are brief biographies of him in A.H.Gregory, Mid-Sussex through the Ages, Charles Clarke (1938), p.172;  also M. Dudeney and E. Hallett, ‘From Pyecombe to Cuckfield’ (Mid Sussex Books), 1999, pages 49-51.

Finally, not on the Green Circle, but at the main entrance to Bedelands Nature Reserve from the recreation area by the Football Ground car park, two wooden plinths standing either side of the entrance to the reserve were viewed.  They had been carved by artist Janice Creaye into a smoothly-finished collage depicting the flora and fauna of the reserve.

The following images show: First, Princess Diana’s arrival by helicopter at the football ground open space, second, walking along Maple Drive to the Disabled Housing project. Third, commemorations of John Saxby’s Pointlock by Jon Mills with the then  Mayor Jaqui Landriani. Fourth, the wooden plinths depicting the  flora and fauna of Bedelands with artist Janice Creaye.

The party, minus Royalty, then returned to the Council Offices in Church Walk for refreshments and an opportunity to mingle with the artists and to hear more about their work.  Artist Steve Geliot’s steel ‘Bluebird contained’ representing the Norris Brothers’ superfast car, was installed a few months later in December and our then M.P., Sir Nicholas Soames, presided at the unveiling.

To read more about Emily Temple, Bee Mason, the Norris Brothers (and Bluebird) go to: Notable People of Burgess Hill