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Henfield is situated on a fertile sandy ridge, with abundant springs, overlooking the River Adur. It was an ideal place for settlement, and there is evidence of people having lived here for many thousands of years. Middle and New Stone-Age men left flint tools. The Romans made a military road to the south of the village along an existing prehistoric trackway, crossing the River Adur south west of Henfield. The name Henfield is thought to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon “Ham-felde”, meaning a dwelling place on high open land. The Saxons came up the Adur valley which was then a wide arm of the sea, and settled on the dry banks close to the Roman river crossing. The earliest moated manor house site can be seen adjacent to the river at Stretham Bridge.

The first written evidence is a charter of 770 AD when an Earl Warbald was granted “15 hides of land” (about 1,800 acres) for the endowment of a church at Henfield, probably on the site of the present St Peter’s Church. For over a thousand years the Manor of Stretham (Henfield) was owned by the Bishops of Chichester. As roads developed in the 13th century, Mockbridge was built over the River Adur to the north of Henfield, providing a north south road to the important port of Shoreham. Gradually, the High Street grew up, most of the houses on the eastern side having been built by the mid 17th century. St Anthony’s Cottage, the oldest surviving, dates from 1390. In the days of stage coaches, Henfield prospered. Three coaching inns, the George, the Plough and the White Hart, all date from the 16th and 17th centuries. When the fishing village of Brighthelmstone became the fashionable resort of Brighton, Henfield was on one of the main roads leading to it.

The opening of the railway from Horsham to Shoreham in 1861 meant that stage coach traffic diminished, but people could now work outside their village, and market gardeners could now sell their produce in London. The railway served the Adur valley for just over 100 years, closing in 1966. Market gardening flourished until the 1950s, feeding Brighton’s ever growing population. In the past, Henfield has had a number of industries including brickmaking and sand quarrying. In Tudor times, it had one of the largest tanyards in Sussex, which in turn led to ancillary industries processing the leather. There were three blacksmiths in the High Street, a mill wright and a wheel wright. Henfield is still an active farming community, with cattle and sheep on the water meadows and arable crops on the higher ground. In spite of much modern housing development, many early buildings of character survive, including 94 buildings Listed as of Special Architectural or Historical Interest, many of which owe their character to their use of local materials.