Maps and Documents

If you go to our Find Out More page…. you will find some guidance on some web sites you can use and on the original records relating to Burgess Hill which are kept in both West and the East Sussex Record Offices as well web sites to use for newspapers.  The East Sussex Record Office is at the Keep at Falmer.

However, because Burgess Hill is a long way from Chichester and because we need interesting visual material for the public events that we attend, we have opted to keep copies of original maps, plans and documents in our own stores.  We have, for example, a copy of the Hammonds estate in the 1700s as well as one of a charming hand-coloured map on parchment of Burgess Hill Farm in the 1600s.  The Victorian school logbook of London Road School was transcribed by members and is in our stores.

In the 19^th century and later property deeds often contain plans of the land to be sold and printed Sales Particulars are also a rich source. You can see an example below which relates to the Victoria Pleasure Gardens when it was sold in 1926. The land was formerly a farm, known as ‘Tibballs’ or ‘Peppers’ in the 1600s, and earlier. It later came to be known as Little Hammonds.

We also have the card indexes of the people and places recorded in all the old manor court books relating to our area from 1600 to the 20th century.

Without the manorial records, we wouldn’t know any of the names of our old farms because they were not freeholds – meaning that they were passed on to heirs or to purchasers not by title deeds but by a record entered in the court books.

Our committee member Michael Duck keeps the data about our documentary collections and Fred Avery is a mine of information about the Museum and we are always willing to help people find things out if we can.

First,  property deed, showing a plan of Hammonds Place from the early 1800’s, the map is aligned north, London road runs along the bottom of the plan.

Second, Burgess Hill Farm 1631, by surveyor Anthony Everenden. North is to the right, so the road along the bottom is Keymer Road and the spur off the right hand end is now Keymer Parade. The original map was in the hands of the Crunden family of Oakhall, Keymer Road in 1918, when it was copied into a local tourist guide. It has since been deposited in West Sussex Record Office from where this copy was obtained.

Third, the Victoria Pleasure Gardens were developed on one of Burgess Hill’s earliest farms, formerly called Peppers or Tibbalds.  It was later called Little Hammonds and finally redeveloped as St. John’s Lodge before being sold for the Pleasure Gardens. the image is from one of our Burgess Hill Heritage & History Association displays and shows a plan of Victoria Pleasure Gardens from the 1940’s sales particulars when the complex was put up for sale. The military had requestioned the site at the outbreak of the second World War and the gardens never reopened.

The final set of images show the recent history of Keymer Brick and Tile works and are taken from display boards that were used at one of our events.

The maps and documents here are just a taster of our collections relating to both our rural and our industrial history.