Haywards Heath V

Nuns let alone sheep and cows were once a sight from Western Road into the farmland of the Priory of Our Lady of Good Counsel with its school for girls. Lilian Rogers writes ‘The sisters arrived in July 1886… in 1891 the community included six teachers offering instruction in history, piano, arithmetic, geography, French, English and needlecraft. There were also two sisters designated as sacristan and ‘procurating’ (housekeeper), five servants and nine boarding pupils. A Belgian priest was living in the lodge, together with a gardener and another housekeeper.’ The sisters moved to Sayers Common in 1977 releasing their land for building. Picture: Charles Tucker.

Can anyone identify the site of the well on America Lane? The country road to Lindfield famous for its strawberries was built up first through philanthropist William Allen’s colony and then from the eastern expansion of Haywards Heath along New England Road. William Allen’s cottages were complemented by buildings on streets with America-linked names chosen to honour his benevolence like Boston Road, Marylands, New England Road, Pilgrim Gardens, Washington Road, and more directly linked to William Allen: Quakers Lane and Allen Road. A century on nearby Scrase Valley Nature Reserve retains the rural ambience of the picture. 

Town growth meant an expansion in the cemetery from St Wilfrid’s Churchyard to the Council maintained plot in Western Road. In this picture taken on 6 June 1917 we see the Bishop of Chichester, Charles Ridgeway, attended by his bewigged Diocesan Registrar consecrating the town cemetery. The congregation would include the second Vicar of St Wilfrid’s Thomas Wyatt whose mortal remains are buried there with his wife Georgina. The Bishop consecrated only part of the cemetery leaving ground for Roman Catholic and Free Church interments. St Wilfrid’s Churchyard was closed a year later. Picture: Fr Ray Smith.

Until 1964 Haywards Heath mill pond was a major town feature linked to the work of the adjacent mill until it was filled in when the last mill building was demolished that year. With the arrival of the railway in 1841 the town became a hub of trade so that the Corn Returns Act of 1882 required weekly returns from five towns in Sussex - Brighton, Chichester, Haywards Heath, Horsham and Lewes. One of the mill buildings associated with Jenner & Higgs was destroyed by fire in 1915. Today a re-sited Balcombe Road goes over the site of the former pond as it passes into College Road through the railway bridge before which there is a grass triangle.

The old gas works beside the railway embankment on Mill Green Road dated back to 1866. They link to Haywards Heath first becoming a town with a Local Board formed in 1872. Ford & Gabe’s Metropolis of Mid Sussex reports how the Board was responsible for lighting in the town ‘initially by 30 gas lamps provided by Haywards Heath Gas Company. On one occasion there was a dispute between the company and the Board about prices which led to the town being temporarily lighted by oil lamps’. Then came electricity and eventually the town said farewell to its gas works!

The second Church of the Ascension in Vale Road was dedicated 21 June 1966. The first was an iron building in St John’s Road erected 1895 ‘to cater for the Asylum area taken over from Wivelsfield’. This building was demolished and the congregation re-sited as St Edmund’s Church at the former congregational Church on Wivelsfield Road moving on to the new build Ascension Church in 1966 leaving a building that now serves as our Islamic Centre. Today’s Ascension Church has an inclusive feel in both its architecture and congregation which worships in a building well used by the local community.

The old 84 bus did a circuit of Haywards Heath very like its 39 and 31 single decker successors. This mid 20th century picture reminds us how in the age when motor cars were a luxury sufficient people looked to buses that a double-decker was essential to help folk travel around the town. Sussex Hotel mentioned on the destination sign was demolished around 1990. It stood on Sussex Square at the top of Sussex Road where Carpetright stands today.

This steam engine was an ambassador for Haywards Heath across the southern railway network. Ford & Gabe’s Metropolis of Mid Sussex reports ‘from the outset the railway was well patronised...the Illustrated London News for 29 October 1842 noticed a proposed royal visit to Brighton and commented ‘The Court will doubtless travel by the railroad’. On 4 October The Times had carried a nevertheless disconcerting account of a fatal accident when a locomotive was derailed and the bodies of the dead were removed to an adjacent public house, the Sergison Arms or Station Inn.’

Southlands Court next to St Richard’s Church recalls the old farm on Sydney Road pictured here a century ago. Southlands farm is mentioned in a 1638 document as being in the occupation of John Hurst. Ford & Gabe’s Metropolis of Mid Sussex mentions how by 1843 ‘it had become part of the land owned by Thomas Compton along the northern boundary of the heath. It disappeared when the area was developed’. Southlands Court today overlooks a stream of commuters heading daily to and from the station which sealed the farm’s fate a century ago. 

Fr Ray Smith writes: ‘It was by Mary Otter’s generosity that the first iron clad Mission Room, a prefabricated structure was opened in New England Fields on Tuesday 15th August 1882 on land given free of cost by Mr Waugh to the Vicar, R.E. Wyatt. From 1883 a ‘Service in America’ was advertised in the Parish Magazine, held every Sunday at 3.30pm. Miss Mary Otter tended the church and led the Sunday School. The iron room was enlarged in 1886 and received its dedication name “The Chapel of the Presentation”.  An altar was provided to allow the celebration of Holy Communion from Sunday 2nd May 1886’. Picture & plaque in Presentation Church.

A postcard handed me by Carlos my barber at Tony’s hairdressers on Sussex Road handed to him by a customer is actually of Burstow’s Salon around 1909. It’s part of a West Sussex library postcard series. What a different atmosphere from today, a domestic feel with gas lighting, nothing clinical! Notice the leather straps on the right for sharpening razors. Robert Stephen Burstow opened his shop as a tobacconists around 1903/4. You can see the Capstan ad in the glass show case. Burstow later became manager of Rice Brothers, saddlers, cycle and motor agents in South Road ’the site of which is now occupied by Sainsbury’s’ ie some 50 years ago.

This postcard handed me at Tony’s barbers on Sussex Road showing South Road, Haywards Heath c1905 has caption on the back: ‘Looking from Sussex Square this view was originally published by Harry Tullett, a photographer and picture framer in South Road from around 1900 to the mid 1920s. Largely residential until the 1880s, South Road then developed into a commercial area. The establishment in 1882 of E Grimsdick, nurserymen, florists and seedsmen, at the large house on the right shows this trend. On the extreme left the shop owned by Eliel Walder, greengrocer, ironmonger, oil and color (sic) man, here from before 1905 until the Great War, was typical of smaller shops in the new Sussex Square’.