Areas we serve

Ashdown Forest and surrounding villages

Ashdown Forest is an open area of 6,500 acres of heathland together with pine, birch and oak woodland in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is most famous as the magical setting for the much loved Winnie The Pooh stories written by A.A.Milne. It was first enclosed as a royal hunting park in the thirteenth century during the reign of Edward II. During the 1800s, people living in and around Ashdown Forest grazed their animals and regularly cut the bracken, heather and gorse (called the "litter") as well as wood to use as fuel for burning and thatching on building roofs and animal pens. Known as "commoner's rights", they exist as beneficial easements attached to properties on the Forest and many still exist today. Whilst the Forest itself is sparsely populated, the villages of Forest Row, Hartfield, Danehill, Chelwood Gate, Nutley and Maresfield all have borders or part of their boundaries on the Forest and benefit from direct access to this wonderful natural asset.

Mid Sussex

As the name implies, Mid Sussex covers the border between East and West Sussex, including the towns of Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill to the south and East Grinstead to the north. Over half of Mid Sussex lies within Areas Of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs), with parts of the Sussex Downs AONB and High Weald AONB falling in Mid Sussex. The primary purpose of AONB designation is to conserve and enhance natural beauty by limiting the amount of development in the area. The High Weald spreads eastwards into Kent and is characterised by numerous villages, ancient routeways, an abundance of small ancient woods and small irregularly shaped and productive fields. The landscape gently undulates and provides a classic portrait of the English countryside. The Sussex Downs offers some of the most spectacular and evocative landscape in Southern England - sweeping chalklands where earth meets sky, precipitous scarp slopes, rigged sandstone uplands and intimate clay vales. It is a protected landscape of immense diversity and contrast.

Local Architecture

Consistent with the landscape and the history of economic settlement in the area, older houses tend to have their history rooted in arable or livestock farming. Sandstone was locally sourced and accounted for much of the high status building before Industrial Revolution. There are also fine examples of medieval timber framed buildings dating from the 16th and 17th Century. Oak-framed buildings were used all over The Weald including threshing barns, many of which have been converted into fine houses in great locations. Later in the 18th Century local brick and plain tiles made from Wealden clay were used, giving an attractive mix of brick, tiled and timber-framed properties which have become the local vernacular style for the many picturesque villages in the Weald. Interestingly, Victorian and Edwardian properties are found on the Forest where wealthy landowners created one-off country houses, often in a traditional Wealden style from local sandstone.