By Richard Bryant, Lindfield History Project Group
In 1583, if you walked from the Highway down the ancient drove road leading to the lands of Walter West, where would you be standing? In today’s terms you would have walked from the High Street, down Brushes Lane, going straight down the earthen path by The Wilderness junction until arriving at the northern corner of The Limes. Spread out before you would have been the lands of Walter West, then known as the East Field and East Wish, which extended east towards Scrase stream and across to the line of Newton Road.
Brushes is an ancient name, it appeared in the 1603 record of church seats, ‘In the 8th seat the heir of Walter West for Bruches a room’.
In the East Field, during an archaeological survey prior to The Limes being built, pieces of Bronze Age pottery were unearthed, indicating people were in this area some 3000 years ago, perhaps living in a seasonal camp. Also discovered were very old field ditches, with one containing early Saxon pottery (circa 650). This is the earliest evidence of a farm in Lindfield.
Listed as one of Lindfield’s ‘chiefiest men’, Walter West was a mercer (shopkeeper selling cloth, haberdashery and dry goods) living at Froyles, as did his direct descendants, who continued to own the East Field and East Wish until 1683. In that year the land passed to Henry Douglas, also a Lindfield mercer. He had married Ann West; sadly she died shortly after giving birth to their son. It is thought the land was given to provide security for the infant. Henry Douglas died in 1703 and the land was acquired by George Luxford, a lawyer who occupied Old Place (today’s West Wing). His family roots were at Windmill Hill, East Sussex.
Although his ownership only lasted a couple of decades, the land became known as Luxfords and subsequently Luxford Farm. Tenants changed regularly and ownership is somewhat cloudy, although there does appear to have been a Luxford family connection. In 1811 ownership was in the hands of Reverend George Haygarth, who was probably also a distant relative. The Haygarths lived at Seckhams in the High Street and the land remained within the family until around 1885 when it was sold.
1947 aerial view of Lindfield Photo: University of Sussex, Global Studies Resource Centre
Charles Kempe, in the process of building Old Place into his grand country house, acquired the larger western part of Luxford Farm. The farmland to the east was purchased by the Guardians of the Poor of the Cuckfield Union (later Cuckfield Rural District Council). This signalled change was on its way for the agrarian landscape which had existed for centuries. Over time East Field and East Wish had been divided into smaller fields with names such as Barn Field and Old Orchard, as reflected in Barncroft Drive and Old Orchard Close.
Perhaps the coming change had been signalled some years earlier, when in 1857 the Lindfield Gas Company built a plant to manufacture gas together with a gasometer on a parcel of land, now Chaloner Close. It was accessed via a track from Lewes Road. This facility became redundant in the late 1890s when the Company was acquired by Haywards Heath Gas Company. The site was subsequently used by Scutts, a village coal merchant, as its coal storage yard.
Returning to Charles Kempe, he removed hedges, planted trees to create wide woodland borders along his boundary and demolished the farm yard buildings. There had never been a Luxford farmhouse. He incorporated the Luxford land into his Old Place lands. Additionally, on fields behind the High Street to the north of Brushes Lane, Kempe created his three acre wilderness garden as a place of solitude and entertainment amongst ornamental trees and shrubs. It provided a contrast to Old Place’s formal gardens and was accessed by an enclosed footbridge over the public footpath that runs east of Francis Road. Long after Kempe’s death and several changes of ownership, the land was purchased in 1957 by Kenneth Holman and the six houses forming The Wilderness were built.
Planning for the eastward expansion of the village, the Cuckfield Rural District Council purchased much of the remaining land lying north of Lewes Road. Its first new road for housing in the 1890s was Eastern Road, with houses built in phases over several decades. At about the same time, on part of the Luxford farmland previously purchased, to the north of Eastern Road, the Council constructed a ‘Sewage Farm’. Following closure of this treatment works, the nine acre site was used as a refuse dump and when full in 1975 was left to grow wild until being reclaimed as the Eastern Road Nature Reserve.
The land east of Eastern Road remained fields until 1938 when it was developed as a ‘Mushroom Factory’ growing mushrooms on an industrial scale. The site later became the Noahs Ark Lane housing development, named after a cottage of that name, and also the old field name East Wish is carried forward as East Wick.
After Eastern Road, the Council created Western Road in 1901 and sold individual plots to developers, with the cottages on the eastern side being the first to be built. The road name was quickly changed to Luxford Road. Charles Kempe, several local tradesmen and later local historian Helena Hall were among those who commissioned houses in the new roads. The semi- detached houses on the village side were constructed around 1926 as part of a Council housing scheme. Harvest Close stands on the site of Smith’s Nursery, established in 1935 by Frederick Smith on land belonging to Vores Oak.
James Box occupied the remaining land between Luxford Road, the High Street and northwards to Brushes Lane, establishing his thriving nursery business growing trees, shrubs and plants. In its heyday the nursery employed as many as 50 men and won numerous awards at Royal Horticultural Society shows. Previously, the old fields adjoining Brushes Lane carried the names Tainter Field and Tainter Mead. It has been said that the names derive from the word tenterhooks, indicating an association with the wool or cloth trade, and that the later pasture in times past was the site of village gatherings for fun and sports.
In the decades following the Second World War, the Council developed this area for housing. The track leading to the old gas works site became Chaloner Road. Newton Road, taking its name from William Newton who purchased the Manor of South Malling Lindfield in 1617, was constructed. It followed the line of the old field boundaries of Luxford Farm to the top of Luxford Road and extended in the 1960s to join up with Eastern Road. Newton Close stands on a field, which in the 1820s was aptly called Two Acre Field. Duke Barn Mews is unsurprising close to the site of Mr Duke’s barn and his name is also reflected in Dukes Road constructed in 1957.
The land east of the High Street demonstrates the change and growth over 120 years which has helped to create today’s thriving community. It is also pleasing to see names from past centuries carried forward into today’s Lindfield.
1947 aerial view of Lindfield Photo: University of Sussex, Global Studies Resource Centre