Museum and Artifacts

Eventually, a different route emerged. St. John’s Church no longer had use for their parish hall in Cyprus Road and the Town Council took it over and upgraded it into a community hall, now known as the Cyprus Hall. Fred was experienced in Local Government building standards and so became a member of the Building Sub-committee of the hall. He soon saw an opportunity for the downstairs space to be converted into a Town Museum so local people could see and enjoy the terracotta and our other collections. We put up £1,500 for setting up the storage and display area and the Town Council matched the sum. Once complete, we opened it to the public free of charge one Saturday a month, with Fred and other members giving their time voluntarily.  Access was from the Cyprus Road Car Park. Regrettably we lost that space recently and instead we only have a small room accessed from the main hall which we have been opening during our monthly evening meetings.

Because of the limited space, much of the terra cotta has been on display at the Southdown Heritage Centre at the Hassocks Garden Centre.  A chance for a new ‘display area’ in the proposed new ‘Beehive’ theatre was on the cards, but that project has not come to pass.

However it is the ‘behind the scenes’ storage for our collected paper and photographic material as well as the artifacts, in controlled atmospheric conditions, we really need.  Actually, it is not ‘us’ but Burgess Hill that needs it.  Our Association, entirely made up of dedicated volunteers, can only identify and campaign for the end result that is appropriate for the town. Once suitable premises are found, together with at least some funds that will cover basic museum or archive repository standards and insurance, then the rest can be carried out by volunteers. We live in hope.

Some particular ‘treasures’

Fred Avery has led the way in identifying and therefore helping to preserve “treasures” of Burgess Hill’s brick, tile, pottery and terracotta artefacts.

“Our most special pieces of terra-cotta, retrieved from two different buildings are a ‘wyvern’ from a building in the Town Centre and Henry Burt’s ‘bee’ which formed a decorative plaque on the front of his house in the London Road. The wyvern is a dragon-like creature, used as a decorative finish at the front end of the ridge at the top of the roof. This one came off its roof in the 1987 gale and broke into 24 pieces. It was restored but remains fragile as is the ridge tile in the display case.

The images show a selection of local pottery that our Society has managed to save before the buildings were demolished.

The ‘bee’ terracotta which we have adopted as our logo, is an artistic expression of Henry Burt’s initials, a stile in the form of the letter ‘H’, with a bumble bee resting on it, representing the B for Burt.  I had collected it on the same evening as one of our committee meetings, in which – as it happened – the search for a suitable logo had been discussed and given up on. As I came in carrying the piece and explained what it represented, everyone just said, ‘HB/ BH. That’ll do!    Henry Burt was one of the founding fathers of the town’s prestigious building firm of Norman and Burt in the London Road (where Wickes’ now stands). His house in London Road stood on the east side of the London Road just north of the traffic lights and is now called Parkside 

Although not often seen by the general public, an original potters’ wheel is of note. It was retrieved from Meeds’ Potteries (Meeds Road area) by a local school teacher, the late Charles Gover, when the works were demolished in the 1950s.  It has been preserved and is at present kept in storage, because we do not have the space to display it properly. 

These three items relate to Burgess Hill’s major industry of brick, tile and pottery production but we also have memorabilia from many other aspects of our history, including the Victoria Pleasure Gardens – a nostalgic part of our past. Their swing-boat rides, boating lake and ‘Temperance’ tea rooms made them a major destination for Victorian Sunday School outings from Brighton. Our collections contain a crested collection of china and special dinner plates made for the Gardens in the early 20^th century.”