BURGESS HILL 



223 



Ready-made Picturesque order of architecture. Here 

 stood one of the numerous turnpike-gates. 



Close by is Riddens Farm, a picturesque little 

 homestead, with tile-hung front and clustered chimneys. 

 It still contains one of those old Sussex cast-iron 

 firebacks mentioned in an earlier page, dated 1622. 



Below Ansty, two miles or thereby down the road, 

 the little river Adur is passed at Bridge Farm, and the 

 twin towns of St. John's Common and Burgess Hill 

 are reached. 



Before 1820 their sites were fields and common 

 land, wild and gorse- covered, free and open. Few 

 houses were then in sight ; the " Anchor " inn, by 

 Burgess Hill, the reputed haunt of smugglers, who 

 stored their contraband in the woods and heaths close 

 by ; and the " King's Head," at St. John's Common, 

 with two or three cottages — these were all. 



St. John's Common, partly in Keymer and partly 

 in Clayton parishes, was enclosed piecemeal, between 

 1828 and 1855, by an arrangement between the lords 

 of the manors and the copyholders, who divided the 

 plunder between them, when this large tract of land 

 resently be- 

 came the site of 

 these towns of 

 St. John's Com- 

 mon and Burgess 

 Hill, which 

 sprang up, if not 

 with quite the 

 rapidity of a 

 Californian 

 mining-town, at 

 least with a 

 celerity pre- 

 viously un- 

 known in Eng- 

 land. Their 

 rapid rise was 

 of course due to the Brighton Railway and its station. 



OLD SUSSEX 

 RIDDENS 



FIREBACK, 

 FARM. 



