Visual Heritage – more detail

In the map below which goes with our urban/ rural photos you can see a large area, now the town centre, covered by Keymer manor’s part of St. John’s Common. The western half of the common, west of the London Road, not on this map, was in the manor of Clayton.  Despite these two jurisdictions, whichever side people lived on, they knew themselves as ‘St John’s Commoners’, a loosely knit, single community.  They were all governed by the same laws and customs that regulated the out-pasturing of their animals on the common and they gathered some essential materials there. In these heavy clay lands there was little corn straw for bedding the animals, so bracken was gathered from the common and used instead. Gorse was also collected and mulched down as a winter feed. The people of the common were united in a common way of life dictated by the clay, and the resources of St. John’s Common at its heart.

When a local diarist like Thomas Marchant of Hurstpierpoint wrote in the 1720s that he was going ‘to the common’, or ‘to St. John’s’ he was actually going to visit one or other of his friends, relatives or business contacts living around the common – exactly where most of the families of Burgess Hill live today. The greater part of Burgess Hill’s modern post -1950 housing stands not on either half of the common but on the former agricultural land of the early farmers. This lay off the central ridge of the common, in lands watered by streams to the north and south.  Additionally, our most-recent large housing developments have been on the east side of Town, an area which has evolved from something completely different. They stand upon a large portion of the great wood and ‘free chase’ of Frekebergh, belonging to the lords of Ditchling Manor. Frekebergh was a continuous swathe stretching from Lodge Hill in Ditchling to what is now the Worlds End Recreation Ground. Farming began patchily here in the medieval period but most of the land was not properly sold or tenanted out until the 16th century. From the prolific backdrop of oak trees that interlace and frame the St. Andrews housing estate off the west part of Cants Lane, it seems as if some of the oak woodland had survived untouched into the 20^th century.

In the photos below we can see the line of oak trees at the Janes Lane end of Manor Road  which follow the ancient boundary between the Keymer side of Frekebergh (the recreation ground) and the Ditchling side (the Welbeck Drive estate). This boundary was created round 900 AD when Keymer manor was created out of Ditchling, but Frekebergh itself, as a wood, was older than that; our medieval chapel of St. John’s, suppressed in 1545 by King Henry VIII’s Reformation – but surviving as a private house, Chapel Farm; and, lastly, one of the beautiful tracks through Frekebergh wood, which survives today as a public right of way leading to the north west part of Ditchling Common.

It is clear therefore that modern Burgess Hill is much more than its former commons.  People then, as now, struggled with the various problems of life, and they worked and socialized as we do, But the context was different from ours and the details were different.   And so, if you would like to know a bit more about the details of their lives,  from the earliest times to the 19^th century go to Earlier History, you can also find out more in the following articles.

Origins of Settlement and farming

Our town’s name and other early place-names

Cottagers, brickmakers and old locals

Obligations to the community

The problem of the poor

Church and chapel

The essays spring from the author’s life time of work and research as a local archivist and Adult Education teacher. Aspects of peoples’ lives, how they farmed, how they worshipped, or the effects of King Henry VIII’s Reformation are brought to life by 6 further essays which examine the local details of our early history – all of this gradually evolving for around 1000 years before the Town was born.

Letters A-L visual signs of our rural history: Numbers 1-10 buildings of merit in our modern town

Purple: former tracks across the common – copied from O.S. drawings (1794-1806) for 1st edition, 1in to 1 mile map. Yellow: extent of St John’s Common before enclosure in 1828 based on information from the old manorial records. Red/Brown: Cottage enclosures 1550 – 1829. Pale Orange: site of former Poor House erected 1734. Green: surrounding farms and farmland. Deep Pink: at Fairplace Hill – medieval hamlet of St John’s and St John’s chapel (suppressed by 1545).

The Base Map is O.S. 6in to 1 mile, circa 1875: Showing how far the old common had developed by then.

Signs and indications and the general legacy of our rural past are ‘hidden in plain sight’. They are visibly threaded through the Burgess Hill we see today, but one needs to know something of the main story to know what we are looking at. It is an important but, if recent experience is relevant, elusive subject to get a grip on. Since 2013 we have lost two iconic timber-framed buildings each of which played a prominent role in our earlier community. Since the 1950s when Burgess Hill began to be developed, we have lost many more. We must not lose any more as a result of our general ignorance. Where farmhouses have gone, at least we can  now begin to shine a light on the markers of our past.

Site A. The Fairplace

Site B. St John’s Chapel graveyard

Site C. North Blackhouse Farm

Site D. Mill Cottages approach

Site E. a meeting of the ways

Site F. The Top House

Site G. The Burh Pond

Site H. Burgess Hill Farm

Site J. Pear Tree Cottage Yew tree

Site K. 17th Century hedge line

Site M. Keymer Parish Poor House

Site A. The Fairplace

Lies in the former hamlet of the same name, at the northern end of St. John’s Common.  The early sheep fairs were held here, ‘time out of mind’ on the Eve, the Feast and the Morrow of St. John the Baptist’s day (Midsummer), with religious celebrations in the Chapel of St. John, a short way down the hill. The feasts of Christmas, Easter, Michaelmas and Midsummer are believed to predate Christianity, and it is entirely possible that the fairs later held here had their roots in prehistory. We do at least know that this ‘fair field’ was divided between of the manors of Clayton and Keymer when they were created in the 9^th or 10^th century, showing that it already existed by then.  In Saxon times and earlier, before the separate manors existed, Fairplace Hill was part of a Royal domain governed from Ditchling.

By the 1600s the Fairplace had become somewhat hemmed in by cottages built around its perimeter, a factor which has informed its modern redevelopment. After the Clayton Common was enclosed in 1855, the sheep fairs were relocated to the more-spacious new recreation ground further south in Fairfield Road.  The strong presence and the constraints of the old site have stamped themselves on the 1960s housing, Fairlea Close, we see there today. A short entrance from West Street provides a footpath and limited car parking. The greater amount of parking and pedestrian access is gained via inner lanes on the north and west sides. The houses themselves are in the innermost area around two linked greens and they have only footpath access to their front doors.

Site B. St. John’s (non-conformist) Chapel graveyard and Sheddingdean Farm hedge

St. John’s Common was surrounded by farmed land and woods. Our earliest farms, of which Sheddingdean was one, existed by the time of the Norman conquest of 1066 AD. We are looking across the graveyard of the non-conformist chapel of St. John, built in 1829, at the west end of Leylands Road. The line of trees beyond marks the perimeter hedge of Sheddingdean Farm. St. John’s Chapel and its graveyard were squeezed into a small triangle of former open common land which lay between the houses of the Fairplace hamlet on the west, Lye Lane (Leylands Road) on the north and this perimeter hedge on the east.  The farm’s land stretched down to where the Maple Drive Co-op now stands. If you look at the high diagonal hedge at the back of the Co-op car park, you are looking at another part of the old farm’s perimeter.

In this photo, the low modern hedge which forms the northern limit of the graveyard will date back to 1829 at most, but Sheddingdean’s boundary trees will have been planted and renewed in a continuous succession of 700 years or more, from at least the early medieval period to the early 19^th century. The old farmhouse was pulled down around 1980 for housing and to build the new Primary School of the same name.

Site C.  Old boundary hedge of North Blackhouse Farm

When North Blackhouse farm first began it was one half of an Anglo-Norman settlement called Lyelands and this photo shows its southern boundary. Beyond to the south was a wood belonging to the Lord of the manor. But then, to ease the pressure of a rising population in the 12^th-14^th centuries, the lord allowed that land to be ‘colonised’. As it was such tough soil for farming, it got the nickname Mal cleys –bad clays. Much later on, in the 19^th century when the Meed’s brickyard owner, William Taylor came to own the farm in the early 1800s, it was known as ‘Blackhouse’. This was perhaps because he had clad it with the fashionable black ‘mathematical tiles’, as can be seen in the squares of ‘Regency’ Kemp town, Brighton.  The older farm to the north, whose farmhouse still stands just south of Noel Rise, then came to be known as North Blackhouse. This photo was taken in 2016, but it looks different today because these fields, in public use, are no longer mown. The grassy areas are being taken over by saplings and the hedges are growing out into blackthorn (sloe) and blackberry thickets and the numerous thrushes and blackbirds which used to feed in the grass for worms are no longer able to do so.

Site D.  The approach to Mill Cottages

Fences at odd angles to the road often signify some area of use that predates the enclosure of the Common, which happened in 1828-9.  Here, the adjacent windmill was erected around 1796 and was the last of the new industries to come to the open Common. It was presumably built to provide flour for a rising local population. The miller’s cottages followed a few years later.  As you can see from the map, the miller’s plot was aligned along the south side of the footpath which brought people to and from the mill. It looks as though the jaunty alignment of the cottages themselves were to allow him to see from his window how the sweeps were behaving.* If the wind changed direction, or was too strong, he would have had to get out there sharpish and adjust things. (* The local word was not ‘sails’ but sweeps).

Site E. A meeting of the ways

Of several early maps of Sussex, it is only the drawings made for the first edition (1in. = 1mile) Ordnance Survey which shows all the tracks across the common. I have plotted them in mauve on the key map above. I was struck by the fact that there were two places, both central to modern Burgess Hill where several of the criss-cross tracks met. I have marked them each with a circle. The south-eastern meeting place seems to be roughly at the entrance to the Cyprus Road car park. The north-western one is around the back end of Church Close, where this magnificent was photographed, and some adjacent back gardens of Park Road /Crescent Road where there are several more oaks. It was an interesting connection because I had only recently discovered this stately oak tree tucked away by the Church Close garage blocks. By two and a bit outstretched ‘hugs’ its girth came out at approx. 12½ feet.  By comparison with the girth of (post 1840) Railway embankment oaks, none of which are this large, this oak would have been standing when the common was still open, a way marker and a resting place for those making the long trudge on a rutty turf track across a mile or more of bracken and gorse.

Site F. The Top House Inn

I have linked these two photos because they relate to the hill of Burgess Hill, or, more specifically, to the ‘top circle’ of the hill which is the culmination of the ridge, from Lodge Hill, Ditchling, and is its highest point (65 metres above sea level).   There is a small amount of textual evidence to suggest that this spot might have been a ‘burh’ (a defended place), used as a meeting place or ‘moot’– a manorial moot in this case.  A person living nearby in 1343 in Keymer Road had the surname Mot, meaning (at, or near the) moot. Pondering on all this I first decided that it probably wasn’t a meeting place because a ‘moot’ drew people in from miles away, and they always needed water for themselves and their animals. And I couldn’t see any. But then I decided to look over the fence at the back of the Top House car park and, lo and behold, a hill-top spring pond. The burh theory is therefore still on the table.

Site G. The ‘Burh pond’ (‘time out of mind’)

Like Fairplace Hill, the burh is on the Ditchling to Handcross trunk route and there was a wayside inn recorded here in 1792, called The Blue Anchor. No building is shown at the Top House site on the early 19^th century maps, but the different levels of floors and roofs in the present building may suggest earlier foundations, and a redeveloped site.  It would be normal to have a hostelry near a meeting place. The farm on the other side of Junction Road was called Blue Anchor Farm, taking its name from the inn. It has been assumed to be inn site but it is a farm of 16^th-century origin, previously woodland. I favour the present ‘Top House’ site for the lost ‘Blue Anchor’. But the Jury is, of course, still out.our Content Goes Here

Site H. Hedgeline at Burgess Hill Farm, 1631

The oak in the foreground of the photo, the fallen oak and the third oak in the same line are on the west hedge of the Hoppegrounde, one of a huddle of little fields and orchards behind the farmhouse, shown on a map of 1631. That house would have been at the Station goods yard entrance today. It stood just east of the farmyard pond but it was replaced around 1660-1680 by a stylish brick-built farmhouse of generous proportions, sited west of the pond. The farmer made bricks as a sideline to farming, using a kiln built on the former house plot. Sadly, the lovely brick farmhouse was pulled down when the land was sold for housing in the 1950s. The flats, Wolstonbury Court in Queens Crescent, stand there today, just visible on the top left of the photo.

A later map of 1819 shows that the spring waters of the pond had been dammed to make a series of 3 further ponds. They linked downhill roughly along the line of the boundary between the playground and the car park. Burgess Hill Farm was one of the earliest and the richest of our old farms, predating the Norman Conquest. The main source of its wealth in earlier times was its water meadows beside the Pookbourne Stream, now in the grounds of Burgess Hill Academy.

Site J.  The old yew tree at Pear Tree Cottage

A 16th century site: A cottage survived here into the 20^th century but was swept away sometime prior to the 1970s redevelopment. An old black and white photo clearly shows this yew tree beside the cottage. Originally there were two half-acre, back-to-back cottage plots, called Slutteswell and Glover’s Bank, which together formed one of earliest known brick and tile making sites in St John’s Common. They were in production at least from the 1570s, when the brick and tile maker there was one John Pomfret. The site expanded in the 1600s but fell out of production in the 18^th century as the industry was handed on to other firms in the immediate vicinity.   

These, mainly unrecognized, early industrial sites in our town, need to be more-widely known. They represent the pioneering spirit of local people who saw a business opportunity, as bricks became popular, and seized it. Over the town as a whole, these early cottages have been redeveloped in a variety of ways but here, in the town centre, a commercial future has evolved seamlessly on the footprint of commercial past.  First the offices of Vandenberg’s Margerines and Shering Chemicals were built here, while today the head office of American Express has carried the flag on into the 21^st century.

Site K.  17^th century hedge line, tracking the Roman Road

The Roman Road from Brighton to London is now waymarked by pavement plaques as it courses through Burgess Hill but the road itself is no longer visible. However, it has left its imprint in the form of boundaries and hedge lines. Burgess Hill Farm’s western boundary is the Roman road, indicating that the feature was still prominent when the bounds were set out.  The strong hedge line with mature trees in this photo is the west boundary of the hut and land of the 1st Burgess Hill Scouts. The hedge itself was set out in the late 1600s when the brick and tile sites described in J above started attracting ‘allied trades’ and took some more of the common into private use. It has survived in situ into present times.

It is reputed that the Roman road goes through the Scout Hut itself, which can just be seen towards the end of the driveway, on the right. If that is true, this hedge has followed its western alignment, but not the ‘agger’ – the raised road itself.  However, in the 1920s, when scholars were arguing among themselves as to whether this road existed at all, it was the particularly raised ‘agger’ over St. John’s Common that settled the matter. 400 years of digging clay up to the ‘agger’– but ignoring its materials – had left it clearly visible as an indisputable Roman road.

Site M.  The 1734 Poor House for Keymer Parish

During the 17^th century several ‘poor houses’ had already been built on St. John’s Common by the officers of Clayton and Keymer parishes. They provided a home for the poor and homeless of the parish where the women could work (spinning, basket making and similar tasks) and the men were found heavier local work. A new one was built here in 1734, for the Keymer poor. They will have grown vegetables on its large triangle of land and perhaps hauled water from a pond dug at the bottom of the plot. It operated for just over 100 years until the system was changed and the big ‘Union’ workhouses were built, which took in the poor from many miles around.

The fan shape of the enclosure has had a lasting effect on its later development. On the west, the neighbour’s boundary wall still follows the diagonal line from the London Road to Lower Church Road. On the east side the nearest oak in the photo and another oak in the distance mark the length of the opposing side of the triangle.  The fence of the kiddies’ play area also meanders in the general direction. The continuing existence of this enclosure will have dictated the northern limit of where Lower Church Road could be laid out. I also feel that the entire area of the kiddies’ playground, the skateboard ramps and the training equipment, all reflect a previously disturbed site which did not lend itself either to open grass or to flower beds. It is good to see young people of today having careless fun on a spot where formerly there had perhaps been a hard life and lot of sadness.

Site 1. Sussex House

Site 2. Brewers Arms

Site 3. St Wilfred’s Church

Site 4. The former Barclays Bank

Site 5. All Saints United Reform Church

Site 6. Bank Buildings

Site 7. Church Road Villas

Site 8. The former Providence Baptist Church

Site 9. Kings Head Court

Site 10. The Brethren Meeting Rooms

Site 1. Sussex House

Sussex House was built for Van den Berg Jergens, a Unilever company, one of its best-known products at the time being margarine. This was the reason this prominent town centre office building acquired a local nickname ‘The Marge Mahal’. Completed c. 1974 by Unilever’s Chief Architect Roy Ashworth it is impressive for the regular repeating design created by its 188 well finished precast concrete sections. A modification to the top of the building with a glazed addition providing further useable space was added more recently and seems to fit in without significantly diluting the strength of the original concept.

Site 2. The Brewers Arms

The Brewers Arms by J L Denman & Sons 1928 in the style of a Georgian town-house for the Kemp Town Brewery, Brighton.

An extension and remodelling of part of premises which had been a public house and brewery since the late 19th Century.

A pre 1928 photo may be now seen in the rear bar in the refurbished and further modernised interior.

Site 3. St. Wilfrid’s Church

St Wilfred’s Church by John Bernard Mendham was employed to design a Roman Catholic church for the town in the late 1930’s, building work beginning in 1940 using local firm Norman and Burt. Later alterations from 1962 and 1970. Saint Wilfrid’s statue and the panel incised with a prayer, above the entrance, are by local Guild artist Joseph Cribb. The uplifting light filled white interior enhances the colour of the contents and decorative detail. There is a series of lithographs by the celebrated artist Sir Frank Brangwyn, depicting the Stations of Cross. There are other works from the local Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, a local crafts community, founded by Hilary Pepler and Eric Gill, the latter having trained Joseph Cribb.

Site 4. The former Barclays Bank

The former Barclays Bank Station Road now (2022) Hunters Estate Agents. The original building had been Burgess Hill’s first purpose-built bank when it was constructed in 1880, originally housing the Brighton Union Branch Bank. Now with chequered stonework typical of 1911-13 from a mid-20th Century extension by J L Denman. From Church Road look out for the unusual chimney pot which maybe has a distant nod to Catalan architect Gaudi’s inventive work in Barcelona.

Site 5. All Saints United Reform Church

This was originally built for the then Congregational Church in 1881-2 in a Neo-Classical plain Tuscan style, little found in the largely red brick Victorian town of the time. Designed by Edward J Hamilton from Brighton, it is set back from Junction Road with what is now car parking space to the front, and was built at a cost of £2,000. The impressive muscular front elevation has four columns supporting a weighty pediment which shelters the entrance portico and inner front elevation which is decorated pilasters and having arched windows to each side of the pedimented doorway.

Site 6. Bank Buildings

Bank Buildings, Station Road a prominent handsome building next to The Railway Hotel. A three-storey block of six shops in a Tudor half-timbered style, built about 1875 and having unusual incised bird and flower decorations in the plaster on the first-floor elevations.  Here the second floor is contained within a steep tiled gabled roof with dormer windows, gables, decorated terracotta ridge tiles and substantial chimney stacks. Between here and St. Johns Church, there are some other similar style shops with accommodation above, in Church Road approaching the turn into Cyprus Road.

Site 7. Church Road Villas

A development in the 1860s, by local resident and benefactor Emily Temple of five pairs of brick-built bay fronted semi-detached villas, facing St. John’s Park. Much of the park was created on land she had herself donated to the town to provide open space for the benefit of the inhabitants of and visitors to the neighbourhood. Compared with another scheme by her in Upper St. John’s Road, of five detached villas with large gardens, the houses in Lower Church Road were designed for those slightly lower down the social scale. They stood, ‘quite private with low railings and individual front gates, substantial houses of good spacious design as Madame Temple would probably not have tolerated anything of a shabby standard being associated with her name’.

Site 8. The former Providence Strict Baptist Chapel

The former Providence Strict Baptist Chapel (Now Providence House) Stucco front (originally cement-rendered) decorated with tall pilasters topped with a pediment. Built by Simeon Norman 1875 and now a private residence. It occupies a fine site on a tree-lined road with views across the park and towards the distant South Downs. Grade II Listed in 1975.

Site 9. Kings Head Court

A small group of cottage style houses which were built about 2013 on the historic site of what had been the town’s oldest pub, inn and meeting place. A wing of the earlier timber framed 17^th C inn building had survived, prior to demolition, hidden within part of the 20^th Century two storey brick-built Kings Head. In recent years The Kings Head had been a convivial spot to watch, with a drink in your hand, the annual London to Brighton Veteran Car Run as the old vehicles made their way up Fairplace Hill on their way to the coast via Burgess Hill past this former coaching inn.

Site 10. The Brethren Meeting Rooms

This building was the town’s first purpose-built library, built by East Sussex County Council and thought to date from c. 1957 it has something of modern in its design. A restrained single storey building symmetrical main and smaller front section, flat roofed with coping topped parapet and brown brick elevations punctuated with windows of normal proportions.  The entrance recess stands out having deep white painted bands framing the doors, reminiscent of the pre-war Art Deco period. Being built in the post-war era, with the economy beginning to recover from shortages of materials, restraint and ideas of simplicity all were perhaps factors influencing the design which nevertheless had a certain gravitas. The one decorative item is the stone East Sussex coat of Arms above the entrance. The building avoided a demolition threat in 2005 due to local protests and now is The Brethren Meeting Room. It had previously been used by the adjoining secondary school for music tuition by well-known music teacher Mike Wood (of Wilbury Jam fame; Michael Stephan Wood when conducting Classical music concerts) after the library relocated to larger premises part of the now demolished Martlets Hall complex.

Sources for Urban Visual Heritage:

Hugh Mathews Burgess Hill (First Pub. 1989) Phillimore & Co Ltd Chichester

Elizabeth Williamson, Tim Hudson, Jeremy Musson, Ian Nairn, Nikolaus Pevsner et al, The Buildings of England, West Sussex (Pub 2019 Yale University Press)

Pat Farell and Shirley Penny Emily Temple: A Burgess Hill Benefactress.Pub 2005 Burgess Hill Local History Society, Occasional Papers No. 1 ISBN: 0-9549281-0-5

Matt Davis An Architectural and Historical Tour of Burgess Hill’s Places of Worship. This article appears in The Chapels Society Newsletter 78 September 2021 ISSN 1357-3276

Matt Davis is Honorary Editor of The Chapels Society a registered charity which seeks to foster public interest in the architectural and historical importance of all places of worship outside the Church of England.  Those interested in the Society’s activities and aims can visit The chapels Society’s membership page to find out how to join.