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About eight miles north of Shoreham-by-Sea, and just a few
miles from the South Downs, a ridge of sandstone land (drained by
a once wide river) thrusts through the Wealden clay. Stone Age man
hunted the area and left flint tools; Romans laid an east/west road;
in 770 the Sussex king granted a charter to build a church on that
land at “Hanefeld” - our first record of HENFIELD.
By William the Conqueror’s time, church manor-lands dictated
life there, Lords prospered, villeins and serfs survived and a scattering
of farms slowly developed with a north/south road crossing the River
Adur at Mock Bridge. Roadside houses spread at tortoise speed along
the hump we now call the High Street.
Gradually Henfield evolved to village status complete with ale houses.
At one of them in 1538 a group of drinkers vowed they were going
a-hunting that night. They thumped their staves upon the ground
and off they went to poach deer in the Lord’s woods. Their
cross-bows gained venison but two keepers’ were injured in
the fracas. The venison was traced, the men detained and the crime
recorded.
In September 1609, the wife of Thomas Smith and her three children
were taken ill. They died and were buried. Two days later, Thomas
was buried. THE PLAGUE! It raged until January. Village life halted;
no socialising, no village fair with its stalls lining the High
Street, no weddings. Of the perhaps 400 villagers, 60 were dead.
Some 35 years later, Parliamentarians destroyed Mock Bridge to prevent
Royalist troop movements - Henfield tasting the Civil War!
By 1700 barges plied the Adur unloading or loading at the bridge:
coal, chalk, timber, and malt from the nearby malt house. Near the
High Street, tanning was an important (and smelly) industry providing
leather - and a name for the bordering land, “Pinchnose Green”.
Brick making, stone quarrying and sand extraction provided alternative
work to farm labouring.
From 1771 road tolls were payable, the income being used to improve
surfacing, and by the 1830’s London/Brighton stage coaches
called daily. In 1861 came the railway, steam trains snorting from
Brighton to Horsham and ousting the stage coach. With improved transport,
market gardening spread across the southern slopes providing vegetables
for London and Brighton.
Population increased. Victorian brick houses, from modest terrace
to huge-gardened mansion, outnumbered the Regency, Georgian and
old timber framed buildings. Shops flourished. By the 1901 census,
1,867 lived here. Modernisation brought piped water, gas, electricity
and finally mains drainage.
Economics took the axe to the railway, in 1966 it closed. Yet people
still came - 4,600 by 1985; 5,400 by 2010 - to make their homes
in this friendly community, to shop in the well served High Street,
have access to excellent health care, enjoy abundant leisure activities
and walk our many “twittens” and footpaths.
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