By Richard Bryant, Lindfield History Project Group

This month’s article looks at the reason why there is a burial ground at Walstead and its design. Until the early part of the 19th century burial facilities were mainly provided by the Church of England in parish churchyards and, for some high status burials, inside churches in vaults sunk into the floor. All Saints Church, like many other parish churches across the country, had existed for close on a thousand years and its churchyard had become full. Existing burials were frequently disturbed by new graves with the consequent fear of risk to public health. Similarly new interments within the church also gave rise to health concerns. There were also issues concerning the burial of non-conformists and members of other religions, as parish churchyards were exclusively Anglican. The churchyard at Lindfield was so full, it is said, new burials were being interred on top of existing graves, which accounts for the raised ground in the northern part of the churchyard.

The government, recognising the widespread nature of these problems, passed the Burial Acts 1853. This Act allowed for the Parish Vestry, forerunner of a Parish Council, to form a publicly financed local burial board to establish a burial ground. Furthermore by ‘her Majesty in Council’ an order could be made that required the discontinuance of burials at specific locations. Such an Order in Council passed on 30th January 1854 applied to Lindfield, requiring ‘burials to cease at once under the church and from and after the first of May 1854 in the churchyard burial ground’. Lindfield churchwardens and parish overseers were faced with establishing a burial board together with the urgent and difficult task of finding a new burial ground.

Their aim was to acquire land near the parish church but owners were not willing to sell. Two grants extending the closure date for the Lindfield churchyard were given, to allow time to find a site, with the final deadline being 1st September 1854. A two-acre plot on Walstead Common on the northern side of East Mascalls Lane was eventually identified as a suitable site. Walstead Common at that time covered over 35 acres and was part of the Manor of Walstead held by the Earl of Chichester, who made the land available. A Vestry Meeting held on 11th May 1854 agreed that the Lindfield Burial Board could borrow the money ‘required for providing and laying out the new burial ground’ and for it to be charged to the parish poor rate. It was further agreed that the Board should ‘provide fit and proper places in which bodies may be received and taken care of previously to internment and to make arrangements for the reception and care of the bodies to be deposited therein’. At a further Parish Vestry meeting on 29th June 1854, the Burial Board was authorised ‘to expend the sum of Twelve Hundred pounds for the purpose of providing and laying out the New Burial ground.’ The following are examples of the Burial Fees set by the Parish Vestry to apply from 19th October 1854:

Vaults 4ft
Minister £1 15s 0d
Clerk £0 7s 6d
Sexton £0 3s 6d
Registering £0 0s 6d
Total: £2 6s 0d

Children under 12 Years of Age buried in a Common Grave
Minister £0 1s 8d
Clerk £0 0s 9d
Sexton £0 0s 9d
Registering £0 0s 6d
Total: £0 3s 8d

Persons Buried at the Expense of the Parish
Minister £0 1s 0d
Clerk £0 1s 0d
Sexton £0 1s 0d
Total: £0 3s 0d

There was no tradition of cemetery design to draw upon and small burial grounds, like Walstead, were often utilitarian but with design references drawn from small country estates that is to say, an entry lodge, some landscaping, boundary walls and the mortuary chapels taking the place of the country house as the focal point. These four elements can be seen to this day in the Walstead Burial Ground. Two mortuary chapels, stood a short distance behind the Entry Lodge, formed the focal point of the burial ground. The identical adjoining chapels each having their own porch and doorway, were dedicated for the separate use of the Church of England and Nonconformists. The Church of England chapel was on the eastern side. They were described, in language of the day, as being for ‘Episcopal’ and ‘Dissenters’ respectively.

The simply designed brick chapels with tiled roofs in the traditional ecclesiastical style had wood lined tunnel vaulted ceilings and tall stone framed, three light arched windows. By the 1900s the Chapels and Lodge were heavily covered in ivy. Today the Chapels have been sympathetically restored to retain their original character and are used as offices. The Entry Lodge built of brick with a tiled roof had living accommodation on either side of the central arch and gabled entranceway that ran through the middle of the building. This archway, with sufficient width to permit the passage of a horse drawn hearse, aligned with the Mortuary Chapels behind, which had pathways running to their respective porches. The arch, although now bricked in, remains visible in outline at the rear of the lodge.

The original boundary wall enclosing the ground was built to a strict specification requiring a uniform height of five feet and one brick thick. This wall was replaced, when the burial ground was enlarged and the boundaries realigned, with the more substantial walls that largely exist today. The original two acre site was laid out with two wide curving pathways running northwards across the burial ground from each mortuary chapel. Trees were planted around the perimeter and the ground generously planted with evergreen bushes such as yews and rhododendrons. Remnants of this planting can still be seen.

In the original layout the ground to the east was consecrated land for Church of England burials. A central area was given over to common graves, burials without headstones and those buried at the expense of the Parish. The ground on the western side was non-consecrated ground for Nonconformist and other burials. In 1905 Lindfield Parish Council, the owners at the time, acquired an additional two and a quarter acres of land to enlarge the burial ground to its present size. The two footpaths extended to the new northern boundary have since been removed. Although perhaps not as pristine as in years past it remains a tranquil resting place, now under the care of Lindfield Rural Parish Council.

Contact Lindfield History Project Group on 01444 482136 or visit https://lindfieldhistoryproject.group/

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By Richard Bryant, Lindfield History Project Group

Mention ‘The Bent’ in Lindfield and one immediately, thinks of The Bent Arms, but who was Bent and where did he live?

When John Bent arrived in Lindfield in 1815 the parish boundary went way beyond its present limits. In December that year he made his first purchase in the area when he bought Oat Hall from Warden Sergison’s estate. He subsequently increased Oat Hall’s land by buying a neighbouring cottage and a few acres of newly enclosed land on West Common to create parkland. He resided in Oat Hall until around 1830 when he demolished it and built a new house, Oathall Place, which stands to this day at the bottom of Oathall Road, Haywards Heath.

How did John Bent acquire the money to buy Oat Hall and build such a grand house? His maternal family were tradesmen at Ashburton, Devon, where he was born on 27th March 1776. He became the MP for Sligo from 1818 to 1820. When being put forward for this seat. John Bent was described as being ‘a commissioner in Demerara’, A British Colony since 1814 on the north coast of South America, famous for its sugar. From 1820 until 1826 he was the MP for Totnes, Devon. According to the ‘History of Parliament’, John Bent ‘certainly had money, was known in the City and invested substantially in landed property in the Lindfield and Cuckfield areas of Sussex’.

The 1817 Slaves Register of the Slave Compensation Commission, a government body set up to pay compensation to slave owners consequent upon the abolition of slavery, shows John Bent as the proprietor of Plantation Vrouw Anna in British Guiana which he sold and mortgaged back to the new owner. He put in a claim for £14,000 for slaves on the plantation but did not receive compensation as they were regarded part of the new owner’s mortgage security. Clearly, John Bent had been involved with and profited from the slave trade. He was involved in a scandal in 1825 relating to a mining company in Ireland and was found not to have been fraudulent but imprudent. However, the other directors were found to have acted fraudulently.

Without doubt money made from slavery helped fund his purchase of property and land in Lindfield. He bought Manor House in the High Street in August 1824, together with fields in Denmans Lane and elsewhere. The White Lion Inn was purchased in 1827, and shortly afterwards he changed its name to The Bent Arms. Around the same time he acquired a house then called ‘Taylors or Cheater’, today South Malling Priory, 88 High Street. John Bent also owned properties in London.

He died on 6th October 1848, aged 73, and was buried at All Souls, Kensal Green, London. He and his wife had four children; three daughters and a son, Gibbs Francis Bent. Upon John Bent’s death his properties passed to Gibbs Francis Bent, who then moved into Oathall Place, and land that he owned gave rise to the name Bentswood.

Years later the Bent family connection with the house ended and its ownership changed several times. The Lindfield Parish boundary also changed placing Oathall in Haywards Heath. It was converted to flats in the 1960s before being restored in the character of an English country house and used as offices.

To the north of Oathall, towards the Common, stood Beckworth, with its entrance drive which is now School Lane. Today all that remains of the estate is Beckworth Lodge, on the approach to Lindfield Primary Academy. Taking its name from a medieval field of that name, Beckworth House was built in 1872 for its first owner Mr William Blaber, a retired merchant. It was built by Parker Anscombe, the well-known Lindfield builder. From around 1900 it was occupied by Mr Mellor Brown, described as ‘living on own means’, and his wife; looking after them were five live-in servants and a gardener.

In 1924 Major George Churcher T.D. and his wife Aida purchased the property. A member of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), Major Churcher was a respected and well-known amateur cultivator of gladioli creating new hybrid varieties and author of an RHS paper The Modern Gladiolus. An exhibitor at many major shows, he was also a keen grower of daffodils and peonies in the extensive gardens. George Churcher died in 1938 and in his memory Aida Churcher gave All Saints Church the carved oak eagle lectern.

In September 1939 at the outbreak of World War II, the Hostel of God, a Catholic Hospice from Clapham, was evacuated to the house for the duration of the hostilities. After the war it became the dormitory house for 24 boys with troubled backgrounds attending a special agricultural course at Haywards Heath Secondary School (Oathall Community College) on the recently established school farm. The house was then used by East Sussex County Council as their education and youth careers office for the area.

A purpose built nursery was constructed in the grounds and opened in January 1966. St Nicholas Nursery provided a home for babies and young children taken into East Sussex County Council care. The nursery closed in 1976 and was demolished, and replaced with St. Nicholas Court. Beckworth House was demolished in March 2000 to make way for the redevelopment of Lindfield Primary School.

A short distance east of today’s Lindfield urban parish boundary stands Walstead Place on land that a couple of hundred years ago was quaintly called Slatfields, Comin and Bridlate.

At the time of the Tithe Survey in the 1840s, the land was owned by a Captain Graham and subsequently sold to Thomas Rook Davis. In about 1851, Thomas Rooke Davis built the house, then called Walstead House, as his country residence and to provide a home for his two unmarried sisters, Ann aged 35 and Caroline aged 30. They had previously lived with their mother at the Manor House in the High Street which they had rented since 1839 from John Bent. Following their mother’s death in 1846, Thomas Davis wished to provide his sisters with their own home. He and his wife, Lois, lived mainly at their London house in Regent’s Park, London.

In January 1883, Thomas Rooke Davis died aged 86, and is notable for being the last person buried in the Lindfield churchyard. This was 28 years after its closure as the family had a vaulted chest tomb. The sisters continued to live at the house with Ann Harriet Davis as head of the household. An entry in the Mid Sussex Directory describes Walstead House as ‘the walled-in domain of Miss Davis’. Her death a couple of years later was marked in 1888 by the installation of a stained glass window in the South (Massets) Chapel of All Saints, Lindfield. The window by Warrington & Co of London cost £63. During her time in Walstead, she had been a good supporter of Scaynes Hill, especially the school, and left the village £200.

The property was then acquired by Henry Mordaunt Cumberlege and his wife Blanche. They had three sons, and in gratitude for their safe return from the Great War they commission a window, designed by C. E. Kempe & Co, for the South Chapel of All Saints.

The Cumberleges were prominent members of Lindfield society. During the Great War, Blanche Cumberlege played a leading role supporting the home front in the village. Henry Cumberlege was the Vicar’s Warden at All Saints for nearly 40 years. In 1935, following his death, a three light memorial window was installed in the east wall of the North Chapel of the parish church. The stained glass window designed by Geoffrey Webb has his mark of a spider and web in the lower right hand corner. A further panel was added in 1939 in memory of Blanche Cumberlege.

In recognition of service to the village, Blanche Cumberlege was given the honour of unveiling the Lindfield sign erected to commemorate George V’s and Queen Mary’s Silver Jubilee on 6th May 1935.

In common with many large houses, Walstead Place was requisitioned by the military during World War II. After the war, it was acquired by the County Council and converted into a residential school for 21 ‘educationally sub-normal’ boys. Subsequently the property became a privately owned retirement home.

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Walstead Place and its burial ground

Lindfield houses - Bentswood