Buxted
| Buxted | |
| Sussex | |
|---|---|
 St Mary, Buxted | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ499234 |
| Location: | 50°59’24"N, -0°7’48"E |
| Data | |
| Population: | 3,343 (2011) |
| Post town: | Uckfield |
| Postcode: | TN22 |
| Dialling code: | 01825 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Wealden |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Wealden |
| Website: | Buxted Parish |
Buxted is a village in Sussex, on the Weald, to the north of Uckfield. The wider parish includes such hamlets as Five Ash Down, Heron's Ghyll and High Hurstwood are included within its boundaries. At one time its importance lay in the Wealden iron industry, and later it became commercially important in the poultry and egg industry.[1]
The village has both road (the high street is also the A272) and rail links to Uckfield and to London via Oxted.
History
The origin of the name Buxted comes from the Old English Boces stede ('Place of the beeches').
The iron-making industry became a major part of Buxted's early prosperity. The first standard blast furnace was called Queenstock and was built in Buxted parish in about 1491.[2] The cannon-making industry in the Weald started at a furnace on the stream at Hoggets Farm lying to the north between Buxted and Hadlow Down.
The first cast-iron cannon made in England was cast in 1543 by Ralf Hogge, an employee of Parson William Levett, a Sussex rector with broad interests, paradoxically enough, in the emerging armaments industry. Levett was removed as Buxted's vicar in 1545 by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury but his friends in high places giot him quickly reinstated. After regaining his clerical position, Levett died a very wealthy man, thanks to his iron mining and smelting operations, founded by his brother John Levett, one of the founders of the Sussex iron industry and one of the wealthiest men in Sussex, who controlled 20 Sussex manors at his death in 1535.[3]
The novelist George Alfred Lawrence was born in Buxted in 1827, the eldest son of the Anglican curate at the time, Rev. Alfred Charnley Lawrence.
The manor house, known as Buxted Park, was purchased by the then Prime Minister, Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, in the early part of the 19th century. He set about extending the park surrounding the house, and eventually coerced the villagers to vacate their own houses to enable him to do so. The village (although not the church) was cleared away and the village then took up its present location.[4] By 1836, the entire original village centre was no more, having been relocated to the site it occupies today. Some of the outlying houses pre-date this move, such as Britts, a 17th-century farmhouse, which still stands. The original manor house was built further down the hill next to the railway where Queen Victoria once visited. The original house burnt down in the latter part of the 19th century and was rebuilt in its present location.
Legends
According to local legend, the ghost of Nan Tuck, a woman from Rotherfield who allegedly poisoned a man in the 17th century, is said to haunt Nan Tuck's Lane in Buxted. Supposedly, the murder was quickly discovered and Tuck evaded her pursuers over the next few days by climbing hedges and hiding in hay ricks. It is said her intention was to take sanctuary in Buxted Parish Church, but with local officials pursuing her, she was forced to run into the woods. According to the tale, she disappeared there and was never seen again. Legend holds that a circular patch of land in the woods near Nan Tuck's Lane stays unfertile and no vegetation will grow there.[5][6][7]
About the village
The parish of Buxted stands partly within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, although the village itself is outside it. Tributaries of both the Rivers Rother (flowing eastward) and Cuckmere flow through the parish, and were used by the iron industry for power. It is largely a rural parish, although the original Britts farmland is now largely covered by modern houses along Britts Farm Road, constructed in the 1980s.
The parish contains an area of Site of Special Scientific Interest—Buxted Park, an old deer park which is very important for the conservation of invertebrates.[8] Buxted Park is now a country house hotel.
The wholesale Buxted Chickens had a factory in Buxted as well as one in Five Ash Down.
Churches
The original parish church, St Margaret The Queen (after Margaret of Scotland), is located in Buxted Park and was built in 1250. Other churches in the parish include St Mary the Virgin, consecrated 1887, Buxted Methodist Church, built 1907 and Holy Trinity Church in High Hurstwood. In Heron's Ghyll is a Roman Catholic church, St John the Evangelist Church.
Transport
The A272 cross-country road passes through the village from west to east; it connects with the A22 and A26 roads about a mile to the west.
Buxted railway station is on the Oxted Line between Uckfield railway station and Crowborough railway station. The line serves London at London Bridge railway station by way of East Croydon.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Buxted) |
References
- ↑ "Buxted Parish Plan". Buxted Parish Council. 2006. p. 3. http://buxtedvillage.org.uk/downloads/BuxtedParishPlan.pdf.
- ↑ Awty, Brian; Whittick, Christopher (2002). "The Lordship of Canterbury, iron-founding at Buxted, and the continental antecedents of cannon-founding in the Weald". Sussex Archaeological Collections 140: 71–81. doi:10.5284/1085896.
- ↑ Mousley, J. E. (1959). "The Fortunes of Some Gentry Families of Elizabethan Sussex". The Economic History Review (Economic History Society) (New Series) 11 (3): 467–483. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.1959.tb01653.x.
- ↑ Old views and maps of Buxted
- ↑ "Is nan still on the loose?" (in en). Johnston Publishing Ltd.. 11 September 2009. http://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/county-rouser/Is-nan-still-on-the.5639410.jp.
- ↑ "History, Buxted village". Buxted Parish Council. http://buxtedvillage.org.uk/village-info/history/.
- ↑ Alex Askaroff (March 2010). Sussex Born and Bred: Tales from the Coast. Fireship Press. pp. 220–. ISBN 978-1-935585-22-0. https://books.google.com/books?id=a0JkLiog-uEC&pg=PA220.
- ↑ SSSI listing and designation for Buxted Park