Glynde is a village and
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...
in the
Lewes District
Lewes is a local government district in East Sussex in southern England covering an area of , with of coastline. It is named after its administrative centre, Lewes. Other towns in the district include Newhaven, Peacehaven, Seaford and Tel ...
of
East Sussex, United Kingdom. It is located two miles (5 km) east of
Lewes.
[OS Explorer map Eastbourne and Beachy Head Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton B2 edition. Publishing Date:2009. ]
Estate
The estate at Glynde has belonged to four interlinked families: the Waleys ("from Wales"), Morleys, Trevors, and Brands. The Trevors were originally from north Wales, and descended from Tudor Trevor, a chieftain who in 915 married the daughter of
Hywel the Good
Hywel Dda, sometimes anglicised as Howel the Good, or Hywel ap Cadell (died 949/950) was a king of Deheubarth who eventually came to rule most of Wales. He became the sole king of Seisyllwg in 920 and shortly thereafter established Deheubarth ...
of Gwynedd and all Wales.
[Hampden, Anthony (1997) ''A glimpse of Glynde'', Lewes, East Sussex: The Book Guild Ltd. ]
The Glynde manor was not named in the
Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...
, but it is probably the unnamed
peculier of the
Archbishop of Canterbury held by one Godfrey of Malling, who also held the manor of South Malling. By the late 12th century, Richard Waleys held four knight fees of the Archbishop, including Glynde.
The Waleys added further estates near
Mayfield (Hawkesden and Bainden), which in the 16th century became the centre of the
Wealden ironmaking industry and a major source of wealth. William Morley (1531–97) added the manors of Combe and
Beddingham, on the other side of Glynde Reach. Harbert Morley (1616–67) added the manor of Preston Beckhelwyn. These remain part of the Glynde Estate.
Glynde Place
Glynde Place
Glynde Place is an Elizabethan Manor House at Glynde in East Sussex, England. Situated in the South Downs National Park, it is the family home of the Viscounts Hampden, whose forebears built the house in 1569. It is a Grade I listed buildin ...
(1569) was erected by William Morley (1531–1597). The house was built of Sussex flint and stone from
Caen. It was square, with an inner courtyard.
The house was considerably altered by
Richard Trevor (1707–1771), Bishop of Durham, who turned it back to front, so that the house looked east. He added an imposing coach house and stable block to the south. On the walls of knapped flint he erected two
wyvern
A wyvern ( , sometimes spelled wivern) is a legendary winged dragon that has two legs.
The wyvern in its various forms is important in heraldry, frequently appearing as a mascot of schools and athletic teams (chiefly in the United States, Un ...
s, the heraldic dragons of the Trevors. In addition, he created a new front hall, embellished the gallery panelling, installed a marble fireplace, and added a set of bronzes.
Parish
![glynde church](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Glynde_church.jpg)
Originally Glynde lay within the 1530-acre (619 ha) Glynde parish, which was united with West
Firle
Firle (; Sussex dialect: ''Furrel'' ) is a village and civil parish in the Lewes district of East Sussex, England. Firle refers to an old-English/Anglo-Saxon word ''fierol'' meaning overgrown with oak. Although the original division of East ...
and
Beddingham after the Second World War, to form
Glynde and Beddingham.
However, it is still a separate civil parish.
The rectory of Glynde was held by the Abbots of
Bec in Normandy from the
Norman Conquest
The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Con ...
to
Agincourt (1415). Henry V's brother, the Duke of Bedford, confiscated it and transferred it to the Dean and Chapter of Windsor (1421). They remain patrons to the living to this day.
The present
parish church of St Mary the Virgin, built by Richard Trevor to a design by
Sir Thomas Robinson, was dedicated in 1765. The old parish church which it replaced appears to have been similar to many churches in the district, having nave, north aisle, and chancel, with south porch. The new church, in
Palladian
Palladian architecture is a European architectural style derived from the work of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). What is today recognised as Palladian architecture evolved from his concepts of symmetry, perspective and ...
style, was faced in Sussex flints and lightened with windows of coloured lozenges of Flemish glass; these were taken out in the 19th century, but some of the glass remains in windows in Glynde Place.
The war memorial, with the names of seventeen men of Glynde who fell in the two world wars, is of
Portland stone and stands at the bottom of the churchyard, close to the road.
Transport
Roads
Glynde was once on the
turnpike
Turnpike often refers to:
* A type of gate, another word for a turnstile
* In the United States, a toll road
Turnpike may also refer to:
Roads United Kingdom
* A turnpike road, a principal road maintained by a turnpike trust, a body with powers ...
between
Lewes and
Eastbourne
Eastbourne () is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, east of Brighton and south of London. Eastbourne is immediately east of Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Great Britain and part of the la ...
. The turnpike road was constituted by the Glynde Bridge Turnpike Act. It is now Ranscombe Lane. It was not a financial success. In 1817, with its act due to expire in 1821 and the works incomplete, a new turnpike was sponsored to cut across the marshes of
Beddingham. This cut from the journey from Lewes to Eastbourne. The new turnpike road is – broadly – the modern
A27. Glynde lies to the north of that road.
Railways
Glynde railway station is located on the
East Coastway Line east of
Lewes and west of
Berwick.
The railway arrived in 1846. The station was built on the then parish boundary between Glynde and
Beddingham. The railway was electrified in 1935.
There were three industrial lines connected to Glynde station:
[Lusted, A. (1985) "The Electric Telpherage Railway". Glynde Archivist 2: 16–28.]
*Balcombe Pit was connected to the railway at the eastern end of Glynde station.
*A tramway to Brigden Pit was connected to the western end of Glynde station.
*A clay pit was connected to the eastern end of the station, first by a
telpherage line, then by a tramway.
The Glynde
telpherage line was built by the Telpherage Company and was opened on Saturday 17 October 1885. Reports of the new system were published as far afield as the New York Times. It was said to cost £1,200, including the equipment to generate electricity, the trains, and the locomotives. The electricity was generated by a dynamo which was powered by a steam engine. The water for the engine was apparently raised by a
windmill
A windmill is a structure that converts wind power into rotational energy using vanes called sails or blades, specifically to mill grain (gristmills), but the term is also extended to windpumps, wind turbines, and other applications, in some ...
at the station end of the line. The line extended for almost a mile. It was a double line of steel rods long and with a diameter. The rods were elevated above the ground on posts. The locomotive and skips were suspended from pulleys that ran on the rods. A train of ten skips could carry a ton of clay."
Industries
Agriculture
The
Southdown breed of sheep were first bred here by
John Ellman
John Ellman (17 October 1753 – 22 November 1832) was an English farmer and stock breeder who developed the Southdown breed of sheep.
Biography Early life
John Ellman was born on 17 October 1753 in Hartfield, Sussex. He moved with his famil ...
.
Frances Garnet Wolseley founded the influential Glynde College for Lady Gardeners at Trevor House, Glynde in 1899. It continued to offer two-year courses at Ragged Lands from 1902 until about 1933.
[Jane Brown, "Wolseley, Frances Garnet, Viscountess Wolseley (1872–1936)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2004)]
Retrieved 27 December 2016. Pay-walled.
/ref>
Lime
Chalk pits are long standing features in the area, used for liming the fields, mending the roads, and occasionally making mortar for building. Transportation by road was prohibitively expensive, so the pits had minimal commercial value.[Lusted, A. (1985) "The Building of Trevor Gardens, Beddingham". Glynde Archivist 1: 6–21.]
Then in 1846 the railway came and Henry Otway Trevor immediately leased all the chalk pits in Glynde and Beddingham to a Lewes limeburning partnership. Three pits were named: Glyndebourne, Brigden, and Balcombe (also known as Poor or Newington). The procedure was to excavate the chalk, turn it into lime in large kilns, and transport it away by rail to be used as cement. The kilns were coal-fired; much of the coal was shipped by barge up Glynde Reach to the wharves at Glynde Bridge. The work in the chalk pits was labour-intensive, with over a hundred men employed in the pits at their peak.
Clay
A clay pit was opened in 1885 north of Glynde Reach, to the east of Decoy Wood. The pit was to supply Gault clay
The Gault Formation is a geological formation of stiff blue clay deposited in a calm, fairly deep-water marine environment during the Lower Cretaceous Period (Upper and Middle Albian). It is well exposed in the coastal cliffs at Copt Point in ...
to the new Sussex Portland Cement works at South Heighton
South Heighton is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. The village is seven miles (12 km) south of Lewes. In the 1890s the village's population grew from less than 100 to over 500 after a cement manu ...
. Both were on land leased from the Glynde Estate for 99 years. In the event, the clay pit was only worked for around 30 years. Initially the clay was transported via a telpherage line to Glynde station, latterly (by the late 1890s) via a tramway.
Power
The lack of fast-moving water has prevented the production of power by water mills. Instead, a number of windmills have been built.[Lusted, A. (1986) "Edward Elphick's Windmill". Glynde Archivist 3: 34–44.]
*It seems that in medieval times there was a windmill at Wyck ().
*In the 16th and 17th centuries there was a windmill on an old burial mound just above and to the west of Speaker's Holt on the crest of the Downs. This was no longer in operation by 1717. Apparently even the mound has now been bulldozed.
*A Glyndebourne estate windmill lay within Ringmer parish, on Mill Plain, just above Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne () is an English country house, the site of an opera house that, since 1934, has been the venue for the annual Glyndebourne Festival Opera. The house, located near Lewes in East Sussex, England, is thought to be about six hun ...
.
*Edward Elphick erected a windmill that stood from 1806 to 1867, located on the Balcombe lands that were eventually swallowed up by the chalk pit. When the mill stood in the way of the pit's expansion, it was dismantled and moved to Blackboys
Framfield is a village and civil parish in the Wealden District of East Sussex, England. The village is located two miles (3 km) east of Uckfield; the settlements of Blackboys, Palehouse and Halland form part of the parish area of 6,700&nb ...
. Its operation there ceased in 1937 and it was demolished in 1945.
When Elphick's windmill was dismantled in 1867, the local farmers transferred their custom to the new steam mill built between Glynde station and Glynde Reach.
Economy and tourism
Glynde has an unusually large number of businesses for a small English village. In addition to the usual village shop, there is a staircase manufacturer in the old steam mill and a weighing equipment manufacturer in the old granary.
Glynde has several tourist attractions. Many tourists are people walking on the South Downs
The South Downs are a range of chalk hills that extends for about across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, in the Eastbourne Downland Estate, East Sussex, in the eas ...
; Glynde sits on the flank of Mount Caburn
Mount Caburn is a 146-metre (490 ft) prominent landmark in East Sussex, England, about one mile (1.6 km) east of Lewes overlooking the village of Glynde. It is the highest part of an outlier of the South Downs, separated from the main ra ...
. The Elizabethan manor house, Glynde Place, is open to the public. Other facilities for visitors include a teashop, a forge, and a paragliding
Paragliding is the recreational and competitive adventure sport of flying paragliders: lightweight, free-flying, foot-launched glider aircraft with no rigid primary structure. The pilot sits in a harness or lies supine in a cocoon-like 'p ...
and hang-gliding
Hang gliding is an air sport or recreational activity in which a pilot flies a light, non-motorised foot-launched heavier-than-air aircraft called a hang glider. Most modern hang gliders are made of an aluminium alloy or composite frame covered ...
centre. North of the village is Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne () is an English country house, the site of an opera house that, since 1934, has been the venue for the annual Glyndebourne Festival Opera. The house, located near Lewes in East Sussex, England, is thought to be about six hun ...
, where opera is performed.
Notes
External links
Glynde church
{{authority control
Villages in East Sussex
Civil parishes in East Sussex
Lewes District