Ninfield

Ninfield
Sussex
Church of St Mary The Virgin, Ninfield
Location
Grid reference:	TQ706124
Location:	50°52’59"N, -0°25’16"E
Data
Population:	1,562  (2011)
Post town:	Battle
Postcode:	TN33
Dialling code:	01424
Local Government
Council:	Wealden
Parliamentary constituency:	Bexhill and Battle

Ninfield is a village in Sussex. It is a linear village centred four miles north of Bexhill-on-Sea where two roads cross: the A269 from Bexhill to Battle and the A271 to Hailsham. It gives a name to the Ninfield Hundred in the Rape of Hastings.

To the west of the village is Standard Hill, said to be the place that William the Bastard placed his flag after the Battle of Hastings.

As with many other Wealden villages, it was involved in the iron industry: that fact is commemorated by the presence in the village of a set of iron stocks. Smuggling was also rife in the eighteenth century.

The village name is said to come from the fact that it was originally composed of nine and three quarter fields. A legal record, of 1452, mentioning a Sussex village as "Nempnefeld", may refer to Ninfield.

In popular culture

Ninfield was once featured in an episode of the classic comedy The Goon Show entitled The Nadger Plague and first broadcast by the BBC in October 1956. In the episode, set in the 16th century, the residents of Ninfield were left terrified when two carriers of the titular plague, which caused the seats of peoples' trousers to "burn out", arrived in the village. The episode was written by Spike Milligan, a sometime resident of Sussex.

James T.A. Osborne (d. 1979), painter, artistic print maker, etcher and engraver long settled in Ninfield.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Ninfield)