Notable people of Burgess Hill

Burgess Hill is a young town. If we take its birth to be around 1850 when half of the old St. John’s Common had been packaged up into lots and built upon, and the other half was destined soon to follow, we are now, in 2022, a hundred and seventy-two years old. To begin with, there was an improvement in road and rail links and the arrival of new people and industries. Like many other growing towns, this brought to Burgess Hill its share of interesting newcomers to live and work here; while others were sprung from families whose history had been rooted in the old St. John’s Common for decades, or centuries even.

Many of the interesting characters of the early stages of our urban development were sprung from existing local families. Our home-grown historian, Fred Avery is sprung from a family who have lived in the immediate area since the 1200s! and who were themselves connected to the 19th century brick and tile producers. Fred’s first piece of research was about his Burgess Hill’s brickmaking hey-day, and the early brickmakers who helped turn St John’s Common into a town.

You can follow the link to find his notes on brickmaker William Norman

A short biography of William Shaw and William Gravett, who respectively founded and developed the other new large-scale brick and pottery works, after the common was enclosed, will be added later. The other main brickmaker in the early years of the new town was William Meeds, expanding a pre-existing works in Station Road to meet the needs of the growing town. He will also be looked at later.

A generation down Simeon Norman made his mark as a skilled carpenter and builder in the firm of Norman and Burt, and again, Fred Avery has contributed some details about him. Other notables, Edwin Street, the colourful character behind the development of the Victoria Pleasure Gardens and C. D. Meads, the clerk of the sheep Fairs and our earliest historian will be added later, as will the Rev. Bacon Phillips, a retired vicar who made a mark for his kindly acts.

Among the newcomers who each brought their own brand of colour, interest and expertise to the town were the explorer ‘Bee Mason’ and the Norris Brothers who built the super-fast vehicle, Bluebird.  Some, like Madam Emily Temple responded to the social needs of the growing town and endowed our first Public Hall and recreation ground.

To read more about the town’s notable people go to: Notable People – more detail

Of course, as the new town gradually became a community it was the ordinary, everyday folk who gave it diversity and colour. However different their life styles and jobs were from our own, they nevertheless helped to shape the Burgess Hill we live in today.  Businesses have changed.

Horses and carts no longer deliver goods to the local shops, the old jalopies have come and gone, no-one now sits upright on a bicycle and we don’t have roads so devoid of traffic that children can safely stand around and play in the middle of them.  So, a big retrospective thankyou to the early photographers who captured these images and allowed us a glimpse of their daily scene.

Sally and Judy Geeson (of film and TV fame) lived in Burgess Hill with their mother and father, Vincent in Leylands Road. Vincent played cricket at St. Andrew’s cricket club in Leylands Road.

The late Doris Hare who, in the 1970s, aged 95 played Reg Varney’s mum in On the Buses. She was in show business for 84 years. Doris lived in “Noel Cottage” from about 1930 to 1940. An occasional visitor to her cottage was Noel Coward, hence the later naming of” Noel Rise”.

The late Valentine Dyall who died in 1985 aged 77. He was best known for the radio series “The Man in Black” and for playing stage roles such as “Abanaza” in “Aladdin” and parts for a deep haunting voice that frightened the audiences.

Comedy film star, the late Norman Wisdom at the age of 84, celebrated his knighthood with his family at the “India Garden” restaurant in early December 1999. Sadly, he died on 4th Oct. 2010 aged 95.

Elizabeth Bartlett (1924-2008), a British poet grew up in Deal, Kent but lived in Burgess Hill for 60 years

Neil Brand, dramatist, composer and author and silent film accompanist at London’s National Film Theatre was born in the town.

The impulse to entertain our family, friends and fellows is as old as mankind itself.

Here is an early example from Burgess Hill, Dorothy Bonavia Hunt’s troupe of Morris dancers, The St. John’s Morris Dancers, performing at Hove in 1912; and a programme from Jack-a-Dandy, a romantic playlet, with country songs and dances performed at Hammonds Place in June 1914. The light-hearted drama, in which the villain fails to gain the fair maiden, was written by Miss Hunt and set at an imagined St. John’s Fair in 1598.

The photo and the leaflet advertising the play were given to me in the 1980s by the late Eileen Hallett to publish in our society Journal; but the Journal folded before it happened. Eileen’s family ran the Victoria Pleasure Gardens until it closed, and she was a founding member of our old Local History Society in 1979: We found the second photo in our archives. It shows a troupe of players dressed in Elizabethan costume and we wonder whether this is indeed the Jack-a Dandy cast.

Are any of you, reading this, interested in the various people who have brought drama and panto to life in Burgess Hill? We would love someone who is, or was, involved with the Theatre Club to give us some potted biographies.

Or were any of you involved with the pantomimes that we all used to go to from the early 70s onward in the dear old Martlets Hall?  Some of us found excuses to go even after our children had grown up. (Oh yes we did!)

And, importantly, are there any photos in existence of the interiors of the Martlets Hall and its community ‘life’ – meetings, dances, exhibitions, Foyer coffee mornings as well as plays, concerts and pantos? We would love to have copies for our archives.

…and if anyone knows why a herd of elephants was outside Burgess Hill Railway Station, we’d love to hear from you.