Visual Heritage

Our committee members Michael Duck and Heather Warne have made a start on identifying what is still standing and visible throughout the town of Burgess Hill, both at its heart in the Town Centre in its surrounding residential areas.  The map onto which their location is plotted represents the broad town centre from Burgess Hill station to Fairplace Hill and Leylands Road to Station Road. In later years we will cover the four surrounding quarters on which most of the modern housing is situated, north-west to the Triangle Leisure Centre and Malthouse Lane; north-east to Janes Lane and Valebridge Road and south to the Lewes Railway line; south east up to the top of Burgess Hill and the Folder’s Lane estate; and south west to cover the Chanctonbury Estate, Hammonds Place area, and up to the Factory estate.

In our project to highlight how ancient and modern features of Burgess Hill’s history can be found side by side throughout the town, Michael has concentrated on our fairly recent built heritage. He has not only picked out buildings of architectural merit, but also some that have played a meaningful role in the community. Heather has identified some places which depict features which were meaningful when our area was almost entirely agricultural, such as the standing (and fallen) trees which mark old hedge lines, old boundaries, pointing to an even earlier past, and some ‘places of resort’ in the early community.

Rural/Urban Heritage map key

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

Colour interpretation of the map

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.

To view all go to: Visual Heritage – more detail.

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…read more

Site B.   St. John’s Chapel graveyard – and Sheddingdean farm hedge, St. John’s Common was surrounded by farmed land and woods…read more

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…read more

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…read more

Site E.  A meeting of the ways – of several early maps of Sussex, it is only the drawings made for the first edition Ordnance Survey which shows all the tracks across the common…read more

Site F. The Top House Inn – this spot might have been a ‘burh’ (a defended place), used as a meeting place or ‘moot’– a manorial moot in this case…read more

Site G. The “Burh Pond” – I looked 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…read more

Site H. Hedge line 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…read more

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…read more

Site K. 17^th century hedge line, tracking the Roman Road – the Roman Road from Brighton to London is now marked by pavement plaques as it goes through Burgess Hill…read more

Site M. Keymer Parish Poor House 1734 – during the 17^th century several ‘poor houses’ had already been built on St. John’s Common…read more

Site 1. Sussex House was built for Van den Berg Jergens, a Unilever company, one of its best-known products at the time being margarine…read more

Site 2. The Brewers Arms by J L Denman & Sons 1928 in the style of a Georgian town-house for the Kemp Town Brewery, Brighton…read more

Site 3. St. Wilfrid’s Church, John Bernard Mendham was employed to design a Roman Catholic church for the town in the late 1930’s…read more

Site 4. The former Barclays Bank Station Road, now (2022) Hunters Estate Agents. The original building had been Burgess Hill’s first purpose-built bank…read more

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…read more

Site 6. 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…read more

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…read more

Site 8. The Former Providence Strict Baptist Chapel (Now Providence House) Stucco front decorated with tall pilasters topped with a pediment…read more

Site 9. Kings Head Court, a group of cottage style houses which were built about 2013 on the historic site of the town’s oldest pub, inn and meeting place…read more

Site 10. The Brethren Meeting Rooms. This building was the town’s first purpose-built library, built by East Sussex County Council…read more