Product Code Database
Hartfield is a village and civil parish in the Wealden District district of East Sussex, England. The parish also includes the settlements of Colemans Hatch, Hammerwood and Holtye, all lying on the northern edge of Ashdown Forest.
The church is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin.
There were three public houses: the Anchor Inn, the Gallipot Inn and the Haywagon Inn. The Haywagon Inn (originally known as The Dorset Arms) dates to the 16th Century and was closed in 2015 following a planning application to convert to housing.Wealden District Council planning application WD 2015 2641 F
Popes Cottage is reputedly the oldest building in the village, originally built as a hall house in 1236.
The elder brother of the writer W. Somerset Maugham, Frederic Maugham, 1st Viscount Maugham PC QC, a lawyer and judge who served as Lord Chancellor from March 1938 until September 1939, and his son, the author Robin Maugham, are buried in the churchyard.
Cotchford Farm, Hartfield was the home of A.A. Milne (1882–1956), author of the Winnie the Pooh books, from where many of his books are set; later it was owned by Brian Jones, guitarist and founder of The Rolling Stones who was discovered dead in the pool in 1969. There is a shop in the village dedicated to all things connected with the Winnie the Pooh stories. Shop at Pooh Corner, pooh-country.co.uk. Accessed 13 September 2022.
Henry VIII was believed to have used Bolebroke Castle, located a short distance from the village, where he hunted wild boar and deer at the nearby Ashdown Forest. He also was believed to have courted Anne Boleyn from this castle.
Hartfield had a railway station on the Three Bridges to Tunbridge Wells Central Line until it was closed in 1967. Most of the former trackbed is now part of the Forest Way, forms part of National Cycle Route 21, and is much used by walkers and cyclists. The station building itself is now used as a pre-school. There is a bus service that connects the village with Crawley, East Grinstead and Tunbridge Wells.
There are a number of businesses in the village. List of businesses in Hartfield
The imposing South Hartfield House was the residence of General Sir Reginald Hildyard, who died there in 1965.
Aside from a number of houses, the most notable buildings are St Stephen's Church and Hammerwood Park at the end of the lane, which was the centre of what was a large country estate extending in its heyday to over .
The church was completed in 1880 funded by local landowner Oswald Augustus Smith and built to a design of E.P. Loftus Brock. Smith also funded the rebuilding of St Peter's Church in Holtye within the same parish. The church can be found on the main road. Inside the church is a pipe organ built by T.C. Lewis of Brixton in 1884.
There is a Scouting campsite at Hammerwood owned and operated by the Lewisham North District Scouts.
It was purchased by the rock band Led Zeppelin in 1973, but not properly maintained by them. Left almost derelict, it was then bought in 1982 and restoration began: that restoration was award-winning and received a lot of television coverage. The house is often used for filming, and is open to the public in the summer: concerts are often held there. Recordings of concerts at Hammerwood Park
St Mary's Church is another notable landmark in Hartfield. The oldest part of the current church building, the nave, is dated to the thirteenth century, to which the south aisle and tower were added in the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century, the shingled spire was added to the tower. In the nineteenth century, extensive repairs were made to the roof and many of the present furnishings in the church were added.
|
|
