Mid Sussex Times December 7 1979

BALCOMBE is a village with all the traditional trappings—yet one that has kept up with the times. Here, that late 70s archetype, the commuter, rubs his pinstripe shoulders with locals whose families have been in the area for generations, without, it would seem, too much friction.

Here you can see a parish church steeped in history, a 96ft. high viaduct which is a masterpiece of Victorian engineering, a Charles II house, Stonehall, and a picture postcard lake and still be within the parish boundaries.

The village is on the site of a Roman road, played host to a Royal wedding in 1931 and is neighbour to an enormous modern reservoir. Its facilities include one of the plushest social clubs in the county, a friendly coffee shop and, of course, the station, probably the one thing that has kept Balcombe alive where other villages have died an anonymous death.

And the name? Well, that has always been a matter of debate. The spelling seems to have gone through just about every variation possible down the years, but there is little doubt the ‘combe’ part refers to a three-sided valley.

The ‘Bal’ could have come from the name of a Saxon gentleman called Bealda, in which case the original name would have been Bealdascombe. Other people claim it means evil valley. Little Strudgate Farm, incidentally used to be called Cut Throat Farm.

In conclusion, a mention of the Balcombe family who overrun America. Apparently, the American Balcombes flourished as yeomen in the village between 1545 and 1645 and had a great gathering at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, U.S.A., in 1901

A FIVE-FOOTED horse, witches in Mill Lane, charcoal burning and the Royal wedding—these are just some of the things Mr. Tony Haworth-Booth remembers about Balcombe in the old days.

Mr. Haworth-Booth has been a county councillor since 1953 and was chairman between 1970 and 1974. From 1952 to 1971 he was on the district council, chairing it for three years, and he is still a member of the Southern Water Authority.

He has lived in Mill House, Mill Lane, the home he now shares with his wife Brenda, nearly all his life. His parents moved into the delightful six-bedroom property, parts of which date back to the 1600s, soon after his birth in 1904.

There’s no doubt he would like to see Balcombe the way it was 30 years ago, but accepts change must come. The big change is that the cottages that used to be occupied by the manual workers are now taken over by commuters and retired people. It is these people who really now have the biggest say in the village.

“Thirty years ago I could get my hair cut in the village, get my shoes soled and heeled and have a horse shod. Those are three things we have lost.

“When I was a child I used to love playing in the woods. We liked to watch the charcoal burners at their work—they lived in conical huts made of sticks and turf, some even had wallpaper inside.

“There were travelling people who used to set up lathes and make chair legs and wooden horses. Others made birch brooms. “We were never told by our parents to keep away from these people. Really we weren’t worried by anyone, whereas today it is not safe to be out alone at night. The only people we were suspicious of were the tramps who used to walk from the workhouse in Crawley to another in Uckfield. Although they were probably perfectly respectable, we thought them frightening and rather smelly.”

Sitting looking over the stretch of water that used to grind corn in the mill, Mr. Haworth-Booth recalls how he made some money at the Royal Wedding in 1931.

He stood outside charging people money to get into St. Mary’s Church and was sufficiently cheeky to ask the man from British Movietone News a fiver to enter the church. The villagers were outraged, but the cameraman gave him the money without a second thought. The cash he raised from this escapade helped pay for the scout cabin.

And then there were the witches who lived in a nearby field. “As a small boy I was sent with my sister on an errand to a witch’s cottage. There was a hell of a thunderstorm and as we came in sight of the cottage we saw a colossal fork of lightning strike the bucket on her well and fizzle it up. The old woman rushed out and waved her fist in the sky, shouting: ‘I’ll teach you to destroy my bucket.’ Then we knew she was a witch and ran all the way back home.

“Once some of the locals working at the mill burnt down a witch’s bothy, but she got her own back. One day they were with one of the wagons towing corn up the hill, when suddenly the two horses stopped. However hard the carters smacked the horses they would not move. We children loved this because we could hear all the rude words.

“Then some more men came by and attached two more horses to the cart, but it still would not move. The witch then arrived and gave the carters a good telling off. She then took a knife from one of them and ran it round each of the cart’s wheels and, of course, it then worked.”

To call the horse that lived in a barn in the village in the 1920s five-footed is a slight exaggeration—it actually had five hooves.

Mr. Haworth-Booth suggests it was the horse mentioned in an old Balcombe fable. A pilgrim was set upon in the forest and left injured. When he awoke he found a horse standing over him.

He asked the horse for water. It replied it could not carry any because it needed all four feet to stand on. The saint then thrust his staff into one of its legs and it grew into a fifth limb.

Commuting is not such a new thing as some people would have you believe. Mr. Haworth-Booth’s father used to travel to London each day from Balcombe, but sometimes the going got hard and on Saturdays he often found himself walking the five or six miles home from Three Bridges. The train did not always stop at Balcombe.

WITHOUT its station, where would Balcombe be? The regular and speedy services to London and Brighton have meant the 2,000 population village has a lifeline to two main centres in the South East. Without that link it could have ended up like so many other small communities, isolated and powerless in the rush of modern affairs.

The station itself is also something for local travellers to be proud of. The neat beds of marigolds, dahlias and golden rod, the tidy platforms and clean woodwork are always winning prizes for Balcombe.

Railwaymen Mr. John Stevens and Mr. Bill Moorey can hardly remember a year when it has not won some prize in the best kept station awards, presented by British Rail.

They say: “We are obviously very proud of the station. Keeping it running efficiently is, of course, our first priority, but in the spare minutes we do a bit of gardening and tidying.”

Students of trade union history would be well advised to take a walk to the end of the platform, where, next to the bridge, on the sandstone slope, there is a carving recording the first strike of engine drivers with the London and Brighton Railway Company on Tuesday, March 26, 1867.

Not far from the station is the magnificent viaduct, its 37 red brick arches proudly standing above the Ouse valley. It is 96 feet high, with spans of 30 feet and carries the lines 500 yards over the valley. At each end there are two pairs of little pavilions with flat elegant roofs.

The viaduct’s designer was John Urpeth Rastrick, from Stourbridge, who was the co-builder of a circular railroad in London, on which you could ride for 5s. He is buried beneath a granite memorial facing the railway line at Brighton.

The pavilions at the end were designed by an architect, David Mocatta, who it would appear, chose his materials well, for they survived a German bomb attack during World War II, an attack which brought down two arches.

The bricks for the viaduct, which was opened 136 years ago, came from Belgium.

There was a time when Balcombe Station was going to be moved from its present position to Redbridge and the track between the village and Burgess Hill widened from two lines to four.

Local writer and historian Mr. Leslie Fairweather says the whole development of Balcombe might have been drastically different had the station been moved, with more building to the north, around the church and up towards High Street.

He says: “I suspect the age old reason of lack of money was why the station was not moved and the tracks were not increased.”

The position of the station does, however, pose problems for old people, says Balcombe’s district councillor Mrs. Christine Carter. The half hourly services are good, but the station is some way from a lot of the village.

She says: “The paths down to the station in the winter are often slippery and some of the older people do suffer. A lot of the cottages further out can be very isolated, but generally we do well.”

INTERESTING AND QUIET RETREAT

SET BACK from a busy main road, Balcombe Parish Church is a quiet retreat for both parishioners and passers-by—but it wasn’t that way on October 24, 1931.

The streets were full of people waiting to catch a glimpse of Queen Mary, who was in the village for the marriage of her niece Lady May Cambridge and Captain Henry Abel Smith, of the Royal Horse Guards.

A brass plate in the front pew beneath the lectern indicates the seat the Queen took for the wedding. The bride was the only daughter of the Earl of Athlone and Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, who was then living at Brantridge Park, Balcombe.

Other members of the Royal family, including the then Prince of Wales, were present, as well as foreign royalty, and one of the bridesmaids was Princess Elizabeth, now the Queen.

Some would see this as a comparatively modern footnote on a history dating back to the late Norman period and possibly even earlier. The church, whose full name is St. Mary’s, is situated to the north-west of the village. It has quite a mixture of architectural styles and comprises a chancel, nave, aisles and a square western tower with low spire.

The spire was the subject of many cruel jokes in years gone by.

One wit came up with the couplet: “Balcombe folk, what silly people; built their church without a steeple.” No-one quite knows how the villagers acquired their reputation for silliness, but another joker of the period suggested they put manure round their spire to make it grow into a steeple like that of Cuckfield.

Looking back to past centuries, the edict of Henry VIII that registers be kept in all parishes was carried out scrupulously, but there is not a lot of extreme age to be found in the church, because many interesting old features were destroyed during extensive re-building in the middle of the last century.

THE CRAZY WORLD OF ANTIQUES

TAKE a trip round Peter Collins’ antiques gallery near Mill Lane, and you enter a crazy world.

You only have to stand outside the gallery, once three cottages, a white house and outbuildings, to see its owner has a fine sense of humour.

A giant gold painted tap with the words “Aye Ready at all times for correction of leaks, faulty cocks, and cistern balls” painted across rises up the wall and large iron spiral staircases drunkenly point skywards taking you nowhere.

On one corner a top-hatted rifleman points his weapon round the corner at you and a sly looking pig, divided into all the different cuts is perched above a door. But wait until you get inside.

I found an admiral’s uniform, an African fly whisk, leopard skins, Victorian collages, a six foot diameter clock face, and most surprisingly of all, a nude plaster bottom in a glass case. The case was, unfortunately, cracked, so I was unable to see upon whom the cast might have been modelled.

Walking round the garden at the back I saw a gypsy caravan, church pulpits and fonts, stone angels, lions and sphinxes. I think my favourite sign, again outside, reads: “Madame de Reske’s Academy of Music, 109 Balls Pond Road. Diplomas: Paris and Vienna.”

Mr. Collins, a successful artist, and his wife Georgette, have their sitting room in the middle of the shop and even the kitchen at the back of the building is full of antiques. They have been in the antiques business for about 24 years and Mr. Collins, 56, has just staged an exhibition of his paintings at his own Stanley Studios in Park Walk, Chelsea.