Extinction of St. John’s Common

By Heather Warne

Since 1770 the turnpike road (London Road) had come through St. John’s Common, all sorts of new people had come through en route to the sea bathing or other delights of Brighton. As a result, the population of that town had grown from 3,600 persons in 1780 to 21,429 persons by 1821 (figures quoted in Armstrong, see notes below).  Building land in Brighton was running short. People travelling through St. John’s Common had noticed its vacant land and its mixed residential and industrial character, and pressure began to mount to put it all up for sale.  The late Sussex historian Dr. Peter Brandon observed that speculative development at St. John’s before the early 19th century ‘…..would have been doomed to fail’ ; but that now the frontage against the turnpike,  ‘…… only 8 miles from Brighton’,  was particularly attractive.

Another reason for support for the enclosure is that many of the Keymer commoners were, by then, sufficiently well-off not to bother with the seasonal putting-out of stock. They preferred the idea of making money by investing in new land.  St. John’s Common would give them an excellent opportunity, with plots by the turnpike road going at £30 an acre and those further away £16 an acre. Moreover, the existing brickmakers Charles Shaw and the Norman brothers were doing well enough to want to expand. They were keen to do so, they had the money and they did indeed purchase large plots on the turnpike road. This, as it turned out, turned their smallish St John’s Common enterprises into Burgess Hill big businesses.

At the point in 1828 when pressure began to convert into action, there was no parish of St. John’s, nor was there any other form of self- governance here to get the job done. The common was simply an area of intractable clays up in the middle of two long parishes, Keymer and Clayton, and two long manors of the same names, each of whose territories then continued north as far as Haywards Heath and Cuckfield.  As commons were ruled and governed by the manors it was therefore down to the manors, their lords and tenants, to set the ball rolling. The Keymer commons were presumably chosen first because they covered a far larger acreage than that of Clayton. This offered their tenants the prospect of good future profits once the rights of common were extinguished and the new allotments of land could be held as freehold, unrestrained by any bothersome manorial custom. The Keymer side of St. John’s stretched east from the London Road, up to the hill of Burgess Hill (Keymer Parade area), and north to Fairplace Hill and Freeks Farm. Additionally, Keymer manor owned the massive wedge of Valebridge Common, fanning out from a narrow tip at Worlds End to a broad swathe by Brooklands and Folly Farms near Haywards Heath.

The process used was known as ‘Enclosure’ and in 1828 this was a protracted and costly business in which the first step was obtaining a private Act of Parliament. The full story of both of the Keymer and Clayton commons enclosures, very well worth reading, is ably told in great detail by Hugh Matthews in Chapters 6 and 7 of his book, Burgess Hill (Phillimore, 1989). I will not repeat many details here but I will draw attention to a few aspects of the main story. I have reproduced below a copy, with interpretive colouring and commentary, of the St. John’s Common part of Keymer’s enclosure (1828-9), below; while the Clayton enclosure plan of 1854-7 is shown in the article relevant to that enclosure. The St. John’s Common plan covers the St John’s Park and Town Centre area, the east side of Fairplace Hill, Station Road, Mill Road and Leylands Road – as far east as Leylands Farm and land north of Lidl’s supermarket. Clayton’s part of St John’s Common covers the west side of Fairplace Hill, West Street to Royal George Road and everything in between; and peters out around Portland Road and Beaconsfield Place.

For Keymer there was a great deal of documentation, much of which has survived. A preliminary plan, depicted in the ‘Birth of the Town’ abstract, set out the areas for sale and the areas to be divided between the commoners. The plots for sale comprised a far larger amount of land than that allotted to the commoners to share between them in lieu of their former grazing and gathering rights. The commoners did receive their new plots free of charge, beyond fencing costs. The proportion of the whole that was put up for sale was unusually large and anticipates that there would be a great deal of interest from prospective buyers. It was expected that the sales would pay for the entire project.

The first two images show: the 1828 -9 enclosure ledger, or ‘Award’.  Maps of the enclosure areas, including the main, town centre area of Burgess Hill and Valebridge Common are bound in, and unsuitable for reproduction as some detail disappears into the spine. They are separately reproduced below. Details relating to two other areas of Keymer commons are not analysed here, viz., Broad Street Green in Keymer Road and the part of Haywards Heath which was in Keymer manor. This lay on the west side of Sussex Road in the Dinnages area. Keymer farmland went north from Rocky Lane through the Vale and Sheppeys area to Ashenground Road.

The third image shows two pages in the Award ledger, allocating enclosure plots to local commoners:

Including, towards top left, Chapel Land now known as Chapel Farm.

The majority of the ordinary tenants of a manor did hold meaningful rights in the use of the common. For the extinction of these rights to take place, the assent in writing of each and every one of these commoners had to be obtained at the outset. The Private Act of Parliament could then be passed and the detailed land surveys carried out. The next stage was for objections to be heard, adjudicating on the same, and finally, raising the money to pay for it all.  The Keymer Act of Parliament alone cost £1,087, the three ‘commissioners’ (land agents by profession), who governed the process, got £845 between them, the contractors who made the new roads, £1,137. Henry Walter the surveyor, who designed the whole scheme and who personally walked all 20 miles of Keymer manor’s boundaries on all sides of the commons, received a high fee of £659, while the clerks and solicitors got a similar sum between them.  The landlord of the King’s Head Inn (top of Fairplace Hill, demolished 2013) will have enjoyed the extra custom, as all the business of enclosure was done there. It is Henry Walter’s decisions in 1828 as to how exactly he would portion out the common into new plots which has created the basic layout of the central part of Burgess Hill today.

The objections registered at the King’s Head hearings make uncomfortable reading, in that Keymer manor had a lot of land in Balcombe and nearly all of it was copyhold, which meant that Keymer’s landholders in that parish came forward as ‘commoners’ and claimed their right to a share of the pickings of the enclosure. Similar large copyhold farmers in the Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath (Rocky Lane to Ashenground Road) were also claiming their rights during the enclosure hearings. They objected, often successfully, to nearly all the claims put in by the smaller cottagers at St. John’s, including that of brickmakers, William and Richard Norman. The stated objection was that the Normans’ land at the town centre (on the Brow) did not enjoy rights of common and therefore did not qualify for a free allotment at enclosure. The Commissioners eventually relented on that one. The Normans, after all, were putting up a large amount of cash to purchase a large new plot on the Turnpike road for their new works. Another disadvantage to the smaller cottagers of St. John’s Common was that newly enclosed land was to be allocated pro rata proportione. The more land you had in the first place, the larger your allotment of new land. If you only had a few acres your new land was usually so small that it was hardly worth the fencing costs.

Caroline Chatfield, a quasi ‘lady of the manor’ who held a large amount of Keymer’s lands in Balcombe parish, managed to quash other nearer copyholders’ claims (for example the farm at The Birchetts in Isaacs Lane) on the grounds that they hadn’t exercised their right of common by putting animals out. But I very much doubt whether her farmers had driven cattle in recent years all the way down to St. John’s from Balcombe.  However, she and the lord of the manor (an absentee, living in Wiltshire, who owned several farms on the north side of Burgess Hill) had clearly come to an arrangement whereby she got all the common land north of Leylands Road (from the new Lidl’s supermarket down to The Hawthorns, across the first building phase of the ‘Northern Arc’ and on to the town recycling centre) but would immediately sell it to him. He was therefore extremely happy to endorse her claims to rights of common!  Eventually everything was settled along these lines and the template for the future town Centre of Burgess Hill was agreed upon.

Below is a map showing the entire St. John’s Common (Keymer part) enclosure scheme; with interpretive colour key.  

Modern reference points (on white labels) are dotted around the plan.

The perimeters – pale green, edged dark green, are the old farms  showing names of their owners. 

Brickmakers’ cottages and rural brick yards in and around the common are coloured orange and also edged in dark green. 

Parish poor house (one of six overall in the modern Burgess Hill area) is coloured purple. Its site, now in John’s Park, is the leisure bike ramps, fitness and kiddies’ play equipment area. 

Everything else, edged dark green is the old common, divided up as lots for sale or as a free share to each copyhold tenant of the manor: 

Freeks Lane area: the generous allotments, blue, granted to Caroline Chatfield for the various copyhold farms absorbed into her ‘Stone Hall’ estate in Balcombe; mauve, his own purchase by the owner of Freeks Farm.

White areas over the whole map, not coloured in: these are the measly share of the common received by the Keymer village tenants and all those living in what is now Burgess Hill, on the N., E. and S. side of the common, an assortment of thin, tiny or miniscule plots!

The main plots sold: Brown: bought by brickmaker William Shaw; orange: bought by brickmakers William and Richard Norman; red: bought by William Taylor the retired brick master of ‘Meeds’, then living at Blackhouse Farm – covering Mill Road (town end), the old Post Office in Station Road, Clifton Road (demolished), Church Road, Cyprus Road and car park and much of the later Church Road;  green: bought by John Ellman, ‘of Lewes, gent.’ (and sheep breeder). It includes the land later given for St. John’s Church (centre top of plot 98), part of St. John’s Park and the east end of Park Road, yellow: John Gainsford, owner of both Hammond’s Mill in Clayton and St. John’s windmill; blue: Dr. Attree (a surgeon) and Dr. King (a medical practitioner) of Brighton. The Poor House, with which they perhaps had a professional involvement, remained in the midst of their western plot for another 15 years. The west ends of Park Road and of Lower Church Road cross this plot, and the east end of the latter runs along the south edge of their adjoining plot. Wyberlye mansion in Leylands Road later occupied the north of this plot; pink: three plots, a sliver west of London Road, and two square plots east, were  bought by ‘gentlemen’ from Brighton. St. John’s Avenue aligns on their east side and St. John’s House in Leylands Road was built in the north plot.

Page from the Enclosure appeals and decisions.  Broad Street Green was where Keymer Road widened out, between Greenlands Close and Ockley hill.  It is judged to be part of the legitimate commons of Keymer and the rights of its commoners are accepted in this excerpt.  It is followed by the claim of brickmaker William Taylor [of Meeds yard]. He had been denied right of common in respect of a small intake of land outside his front door, but his farmland itself, Blackhouse Farm and North Blackhouse, qualified him for a share of the enclosure because they were ‘ancient tenements’.

As a postscript to Valebridge Common which was another huge part of the Keymer commons, it is worth recounting that, because of its scenic nature, the sales pitch at enclosure suggested it was, ‘….calculated in all respects for the erection of villas’. This idea was, I believe, scotched once the surveyors and engineers started prospecting the route for their new London to Brighton railway. The surveyors chose the old Valebridge Common for the stretch down from Haywards Heath to Burgess Hill because it offered them a string of simple land purchases from the new allotment holders. It is far easier to deal with owners of newly-acquired plots than it is to deal with entrenched estate owners. And so, the furzy open stretch of that common was cut through not only by a brutally straight new enclosure road (Valebridge Road) but also, a decade later by the equally straight bullet line of the Railway.

The latter was destined in time to bring even more day trippers through the area, seeking the pleasures that Brighton now had to offer.  But luckily, it is only the southern stretch of the Common which has eventually succumbed to modern housing. From the pedestrian crossing of the railway northwards the old common south of the River Adur has been fortunate enough to become part of the recently created Bedelands Nature Reserve.  The unique nature of the old common, unploughed for at least 1000 years from its earliest designation as a common pasture to the present has led to its abundance of wild flowers.  Part of it was recently dedicated as a ‘Coronation Meadow’ and it now donates seed to other would-be wild flower meadows from its abundant harvest.

The images below show: First, the extent of Valebridge Common (plotted in yellow onto the O.S.1875 map, scale: 6in. + 1 mile), with surrounding agricultural land pale green. The small piece of yellow, bottom left at Leylands Farm, is part of St. John’s Common. Second, a detail of Valebridge watermill.  In 1610, John Attree of Theobalds replaced his defunct and silted-up mill in 1610 at Jesters, at the Eight Arches Viaduct, by flooding 6 acres of Valebridge Common and building a Mill.  That mill was carried away in a flood around 1800 or earlier, when the dam burst. Third, the Watermill Inn at Worlds End, formerly standing at the southern end of the open common. Before the station was opened this whole area was known as ‘Valebridge’.

For a reflection on the physical and visible effects of the two enclosures, Keymer and Clayton, in terms of the way modern Burgess Hill has developed in those parts of the modern town: go to  A reflection on the old common. See also Extinction of St John’s Common: Clayton side.

Much further research on the details of the two enclosures, Keymer and Clayton could be done. 

Original documents: Keymer Enclosure Award and Plans, WSRO QDD/6/1 E3; proceedings – ESRO/The Keep SAS Acc 981SAS Acc. 981: these loose, uncatalogued papers include official Keymer Enclosure decisions of great interest; Clayton enclosure Award and map: solicitor’s copy in ESRO. ADA 16; re. the creation of Fairfield Rec., WSRO, PAR 294, 12/1, March 1865.

Hugh Matthews, Burgess Hill (as cited previously), Chapter 6 re. Keymer, and Chapter 7 re. Clayton.

Dr. Peter Brandon, The Inclosure of Keymer Common, Sussex Notes and Queries, 15, no. 6 (1960)

Concerning re the rapid 19thc. growth of population in Brighton, reaching 65,000 by 1851, see J. R. Armstrong, A history of Sussex (Phillimore, 1974); and cap. 47 in K. Leslie and B. Short, An historical Atlas of Sussex (Phillimore, 1999).

The anecdote about the first Valebridge mill being carried away is from a history of Sussex by T.W.Horsfield, published 1834, page 242. Apparently, it came to rest in a tree and the miller’s family walked away unharmed! The miller during the 1700s had been repeatedly chastised and fined in the manor courts for not repairing the mill dam!

As a postscript to the Keymer Enclosure it is worth noting that a sliver of land belonging to Keymer Parish has given us several of the familiar buildings which still lie on that side of the London Road.