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| Crowborough
High Street |
Crowborough
is perched 800ft. above sea level in the centre of the High Weald,
an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. William Cobbett travelling
from Forest Row to Uckfield in 1822 described Ashdown Forest as
‘a heath with here and there a few birch scrubs upon it, verily
the most villainously ugly spot I ever saw in England’! How
wrong he was. Today Ashdown Forest which adjoins Crowborough is
appreciated by many who come from far and wide to enjoy the area.
The Victorian
‘romantic’ view of the beauties of the landscape probably
contributed to the development of the village centre at the beginning
of this century, when Crowborough was described by local estate
agents as ‘Scotland in Sussex’.
Boys Firmin’s
Guide, first published in the 1890’s emphasises the beauties
of the situation and the surrounding countryside. ‘Nature
has been very bountiful in Crowborough. Placed on one of the most
elevated ridges in the County of Sussex, it commands extensive panoramic
views, being surrounded by valleys and hills richly beautiful in
form and colour.
In prehistoric
times these hills and valleys were densely forested. However, recent
research suggests that the forest was not as impenetrable as was
once thought. Mesolithic and neolithic tools have been found in
considerable numbers in surrounding parishes. Concentrations of
these tools show that there was some settled occupation, and rock
shelters have been excavated in Tunbridge Wells, and High Hurstwood.
The flint implements recorded from within Crowborough include a
neolithic fabricator discovered during alterations to Crowborough
Rugby Club and a small scraper and some flint flakes, waste products
of flint working, from close to Allfreys Farm.
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| Centenary
Cake |
Excavations
at an iron-age hill fort at Garden Hill, Hartfield, show the inhabitants
to have been readily influenced by the Roman invaders. Their traditional
round houses were replaced in the 2nd Century A.D. by a rectangular
villa building with an adjoining stone-built bath house. Garden
Hill appears to have been a management centre for small iron-smelting
furnaces in the area. There is a similar hill fort at Saxonbury
Hill, Frant.
These early
iron smelting furnaces were known as bloomery furnaces, the iron
being formed in an impure mass, known as a bloom, inside the furnace.
An important
Roman Road, the London-Lewes way, crosses Ashdown Forest, its alignment
from Five Hundred Acre Wood towards Camp Hill being the nearest
to Crowborough. This road was probably constructed for the purpose
of distributing the products of local iron works. Sections of the
road in the Weald are surfaced with bloomery slag. Many Roman iron-working
sites are known in the vicinity and work by the Wealden Iron Research
Group has shown sites of differing importance, large complexes probably
controlled by the Roman authorities such as Oldlands at Herons Ghyll,
and smaller sites servicing local needs. A number of small bloomery
sites exist within the parish boundaries in Jefferies Wood, near
Redbridge Farm, and at Steel Cross but none has been definitely
attributed to the Roman period. The use of bloomery furnaces continued
until the introduction of water powered blast furnaces in the 15th
century, and therefore some of the local sites could be medieval.
Iron Age, Roman and medieval sites have been excavated in Minepit
Wood, Rotherfield.
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| Frank
Humphry Fire Engine at the Centenary Summer Fair |
A minor Roman
road, following the line of the Rotherfield-Withyham parish boundary
for part of its route, appears to link the Roman site with the London-Lewes
way.
Crowborough
was, until 1905, part of the ancient parish of Rotherfield and its
early history cannot be divorced from the history of Rotherfield
itself. The original church was constructed in the 8th century and,
as a royal estate, Rotherfield is mentioned in the wills of Alfred
(899) and Athelstan Atheling (1015).
Some older local
place names provide clues about the gradual development of the farmland
during the Saxon period. Rotherfield itself means ‘open land
of the cattle’; Rumsden means ‘spacious woodland pasture’;
Hoadleys, a heath forest glade; Rendlie, a cleared forest glade;
and Gullridge, meaning ‘golden ridge’, is of special
interest in view of corroborative evidence from the early settlement
there. A Saxon bloomery site, unique in the Weald, has been excavated
at Ashdown Forest.
The Domesday
book reference to Rotherfield is interesting. It was one of only
two royal holdings in Sussex, the other being Bosham in West Sussex.
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| Centenary
flower bed. |
‘King
William holds Rotherfield in Lordship, from the holding of the Bishop
of Bayeaux. Earl Godwin held it. Then and now it answered for 3
hides. Land for 26 ploughs. In Lordship 4 ploughs 14 villagers with
6 smallholders have 14 ploughs, 4 slaves; woodland at 80 pigs from
pasturage; a park. Value before 1066 £16, later £14;
now £12; however it pays £30’.
The park, Miss
Pullein suggests in her book ‘Rotherfield the story of some
Wealden Manors’ was not, in fact, Eridge Park but another
hunting park with a pale, a ditch and bank with a fence on top,
and gates for access. It can be traced from local place-names; Maynards
Gate and Palesgate are part of our parish, and the others are Browngate,
Boarsheadgate, Redgate, Blackthorngate, Colshornegate, Markgate
and Highgate. In the Count of Mortains holding in Rotherfield, Ansfrid
is named as holding one hide from the Count and Dr. L.E. Saltzman
suggested that this hide might be the Manor of Alchomes, now partially
occupied by Crowborough Beacon Golf Course.
In 1292 we find
the earliest written reference to Crowborough. John de Lewes, Rector
of Buxted, complained that some of his parishioners were attending
the more accessible church at Withyham ‘during the greater
part of the winter season owing to the inundations and dangerous
character of the highway’. Their own chapel had decayed, the
land had returned to cultivation and, as a result he was losing
their tithes and offerings! Land was granted by the Archbishop of
Canterbury - two acres of land lying on the waste of ‘Cranbergh’
hill at a place commonly called ‘Scherche juxta Gelderegg’
(Gillridge).
Unfortunately,
no record exists to tell us whether their chapel was ever rebuilt.
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| Stepney,
the Bluebell Engine at the Centenary Summer Fair |
As the population
increased, more land was cleared for farming. The Rotherfield Manor
map of 1597 shows the expansion of agriculture with its record of
old and new woodland clearances known as assarts. The medieval bloomery
sites, although less numerous than the Roman, show that the iron
industry, with its attendant occupations of wood coppicing, charcoal
burning and mining was still in existence.
The site of
a medieval moated manor house can be seen still close by the stream
at Walshes Manor. A new house was built later, higher on the hill,
and this in its turn gave way to a fine new manor house built by
Alexander Fermor in 1551. This house was destroyed by fire in 1893.
Alexander Fermor had Hamsell Furnace and Nicholas Fowle had Rivenhall
in Rotherfield parish.
Nicholas Fowle’s
brother, Anthony, owned Maynards Gate Furnace, the only one of the
famous Wealden water-powered blast furnaces that lies within Crowborough
parish, and one of the few to have been excavated, in 1975 the site
was threatened by the development of Crowborough’s new industrial
estate! Excavation by the Sussex Archaeological Field Unit revealed
the wheel pit, the furnace base, a working floor, possibly for bellows,
and a gun casting pit, probably capable of casting guns up to the
size of a Saker, 6-6 1/2 ft. long and weighing half a ton. Cannon
balls were also found on the site.
In 1573 Ralph
Hogge, the Queen’s Gunstone maker of iron, complained that
other ironmasters were casting ordnance and shot and shipping it
‘to Strangers to carry over the Seas, as they say such nombrs
that yor enimie is better fournished with them then or owne contry
ships ar’. The two principal villains, according to Hogge,
were Nicholas Fowle and Alexander Fermor. Perhaps this illegal export
trade laid the foundations for future smuggling activity when Crowborough
men were apparently not averse to enjoying a skirmish with the revenue
men.
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| Ashdown
Artists who exhibited in the Town Hall as part of the Crowborough
Centenary Celebrations |
At the time
of Hogge’s complaint, there was a very real threat of invasion
by the Queen’s enemies. An elaborate system of warning beacons
were already in existence. The lighting of these beacons indicated
to the population close by where the invasion had taken place, and
gave early warning to London so that the ‘trained companies’
could be alerted.
In 1576 William
Lambarde published an edition for his ‘Perambulation of Kent’
which contained a map of the system for Kent. The map shows Crowborough
Beacon because it linked with another at Ightham in Kent. The warning
signal from a coastal beacon, we do not know which, alerted Crowborough,
then Ightham, and another beacon near Rochester and then on through
further beacons to London. Two men were required to keep watch at
the beacons day and night in order to ensure an efficient and speedy
alert in the event of invasion.
The baptism
of Alexander’s great-grandson, Henry Fermor, who was to become
Crowborough’s great benefactor, was recorded in Rotherfield
Parish Registers on July 6th, 1667. Henry’s name does not
occur again in the registers and there is no evidence to suggest
that he spent more than his childhood here. Later he lived in Sevenoaks
in his ‘mansion’ house close to the Vine Inn; he was
created Baronet in 1725. In his will he remembered his childhood
home and showed his concern for the welfare of the inhabitants of
the outlying area of the parish known as Crowborough. He directed
that £1,500 be used to provide ‘a chapel or church and
a charity school built in the plainest and cheapest manner so as
to be strong and lasting’ at a place called Crowborough ‘for
the use and benefit of the very ignorant and heathenish people’.
Charity Farm was purchased with the £500 allotted to provide
for repairs to these buildings.
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| Crowborough
Beacon Golf Club. |
Sir Henry intended
that further land to the value of £7,000 was to be purchased,
£4,000 to provide incomes for the schoolmaster and minister
and £3,000 to provide ‘wool, hemp and books to be equally
divided and distributed’ among the forty pupils at the school.
Unfortunately, the terms of his will were not carried out and this
money was invested in South Sea Annuities and Three Per Cent Reduced
Annuities, and the charity suffered accordingly.
In 1744 ten
years after his death, a chapel of ease was built together with
a school house beside what is now Chapel Green. The school house
has since become the vicarage and in 1880 the new ecclesiastical
parish of Crowborough was formed and the church of All Saints was
built to replace the chapel that had fallen into disrepair. The
present Sir Henry Fermor Primary School was built on land belonging
to Charity Farm, but the rest of the land has long since been sold.
Small communities
in the Weald, like Crowborough, remained remote from civilisation
because of the problems of transport over notoriously bad roads.
Horace Walpole, in a letter dated 1749, describes the problems facing
travellers in Sussex. “We are returned from our expedition
miraculously well, considering all our distresses. If you love good
roads, good inns, plenty of positions and horses, be so kind as
never to go to Sussex - Sussex is a great dampener of curiosity’.
The development
of the turnpike roads at the end of the 18th century probably began
to draw development away from Chapel Green and towards the present
town centre. When the post windmill, which stood in Mill Lane, was
offered for sale by Charles Hother in 1788, its position close to
the turnpike road was emphasised.
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| The
Ghyll, lovely woodlands in the centre of Crowborough
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Edward Howis,
who leased what is now the Warren estate in Withyham from Lord Henniker
in 1809, boasted of taking only three hours on a good horse to reach
his business premises in Piccadilly. He developed his ‘Crowborough
Lodge’ estate, building two large water mills, one of which,
New Mill, ground the flour for Queen Victoria’s wedding cake.
His estate must have provided much needed employment and prosperity
for agricultural labourers in Crowborough at a time when they were
grossly undervalued.
The 1851 census
returns show the enormous predominance of agricultural workers in
the population of Crowborough, but this situation soon began to
change.
In 1868 the
railway between Groombridge and Uckfield was opened, the station,
at Jarvis Brook, being originally named Rotherfield but later changed
to Crowborough and Jarvis Brook. Eleven years later, in 1879, Joseph
Firth established the brickworks at Jarvis Brook. The development
of Crowborough was gathering momentum.
Dr. Prince who
lived at The Observatory in Beacon Road contributed towards the
development of Crowborough as a health resort. In his book ‘Crowborough
Hill’, he states that in the cases of diseases of the respiratory
organs, nervous depression, langour and debility of the system “it
will be found...that the delightful and extensive scenery, the open,
airy and vivifying atmosphere, abounding in ozone, together with
a numerous retinue of natural attractions in the vicinity, all contribute
to secure to the visitor that measure of health which generally
follows the due co-operation of an active body with a cheerful and
contented mind.”
The districts
reputation as a health resort brought one of Crowborough’s
most distinguished residents to stay for the benefit of his failing
health. Richard Jefferies, the naturalist and author, came to Crowborough
in 1885, staying first at Jarvis Brook and later at The Downs, London
Road. Some of his most beautiful essays were written during his
stay here. Sadly, the improvement in his health which was apparent
at first was not sustained, and he moved once again to Worthing
where he died, at the early age of 39, in 1887.
The Beacon Hotel
was built to accommodate those who came to enjoy the scenery and
benefit their health and the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club was formed
in 1895 to help them to develop the active bodies needed to combine
with cheerfulness and contentment to provide good health! Following
these early developments in the community, the Civil Parish of Crowborough
was formed in 1905, and in that period another distinguished author
visited the town, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the immortal
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who came to live at Windlesham Manor
in 1907 until his death in 1930. The latter years of his life were
largely devoted to psychic research. He published two books on spiritualism
in the 1920’s and in 1927 Sherlock Holmes made his final appearance
in ‘The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes’.
The two great
wars, which have dominated the history of the 20th century, brought
soldiers from many parts of Britain and the Commonwealth to the
army camps at the Warren and St John’s. The Warren Camp is
still used for territorial, cadet and some regular army training.
A sad reminder of the soldiers from abroad stationed in these camps
during the war is the Memorial on the golf course to the Canadian
soldiers of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment who lost their lives
when a flying bomb fell near their tented encampment. A Service
of Remembrance is held annually under the auspices of the Crowborough
branch of the Royal British Legion and the Canadian Veterans Association
of the United Kingdom at Canada Green, a memorial designed and built
by the Town Council to commemorate their lives.
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| Floral
displays in the centre of town. |
The Goldsmiths
Company purchased property known as the Hamsell Estate in 1856.
Their Crest appears on many of the farmhouses on the estate which
included the Pilmer Road area of Crowborough. When the company sold
the estate in 1937, the Goldsmiths Recreation Ground was given to
the parish. The Town Council has since purchased additional land
and has developed the ground into a much needed recreation centre
for the whole community. The ground now houses a sports centre including
a swimming pool, a boating lake, the Locomotive Society, the Camping
and Caravan and Petanque clubs.
In 2000 the
Town Council opened the Queen Mother’s Garden at Canada Green
to celebrate the life and 100th birthday of HM Queen Elizabeth the
Queen Mother.
The last thirty
years have seen massive housing development within the parish, the
tiny Victorian hamlets of Jarvis Brook, Whitehill, Alderbrook and
Poundfield having given way to the town of Crowborough. The surrounding
countryside still gives the same pleasure it gave to Richard Jefferies
over one hundred years ago. “A thousand acres of purple heath
sloping southwards to the sun, deep valleys of dark heather; further
slopes beyond of purple, more valleys of heather - the heather shows
more in the sunlight, and heather darkens the shadow of the hollows
- and so on and on, mile after mile, till the heath-bells seem to
end in the sunset”. |