Horsted Keynes 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 Mid Sussex District of

West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ...

, England. The village is about north east of

Haywards Heath Haywards Heath is a town in West Sussex, England, south of London, north of Brighton, south of Gatwick Airport and northeast of the county town, Chichester. Nearby towns include Burgess Hill to the southwest, Horsham to the northwest, Cra ...

, in the

Weald The Weald () is an area of South East England between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and the South Downs. It crosses the counties of Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and Kent. It has three separate parts: the sandstone "High Weald" in the ...

. The civil parish is largely rural, covering . At the 2011 census, it had a population of 1,586, increased from 1,507 in 2001. The 0° meridian passes about 1 mile to the east of the village of Horsted Keynes.

Origin and history

Guillaume de Cahaignes, a French knight who participated in the

Norman conquest of England 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 Conqu ...

, and lord of what is now Cahagnes, was given Milton in Buckinghamshire and the Sussex village of Horstede (The Place of Horses in

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

). The latter became Horstede de Cahaignes and in time Horsted Keynes. The place name is first attested 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 manusc ...

of 1086. The village has been formally twinned with the Normandy village of Cahagnes since 1971. The Horsted Cahagnes Society promotes social and cultural links, and organises annual exchange visits between the two places. On Saturday, 28 August 1624, Horsted Keynes hosted what is believed to be the earliest known organised

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...

match in Sussex. Knowledge of it stems from the death thirteen days later of Jasper Vinall, on whom an inquest was held. He had suffered a head injury during the game when accidentally hit by a

cricket bat A cricket bat is a specialised piece of equipment used by batters in the sport of cricket to hit the ball, typically consisting of a cane handle attached to a flat-fronted willow-wood blade. It may also be used by a batter who is making groun ...

. Two months before being assassinated, U.S. President John F. Kennedy slept in the parish when he stayed one Saturday night at Birch Grove, the home of the former Prime Minister

Harold Macmillan Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as " Supermac", ...

. The American Secret Service closed the village that night, siting their communication hub in the Lounge Bar of The Crown Inn. This part of Sussex was known for its

iron industry Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys. The earliest surviving prehistoric iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ...

long before the

industrial revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

and the coming of the railways. Little remains of this now, except for the hammer ponds and other traces of this activity dotted around the surrounding countryside, although iron working is remembered in many local place names.

Amenities

Horsted Keynes is centred on a

village green A village green is a common open area within a village or other settlement. Historically, a village green was common grassland with a pond for watering cattle and other stock, often at the edge of a rural settlement, used for gathering cattle t ...

with pubs, Post Office and village store. The Post Office was to be closed down for lack of use but was bought up by a group of villagers who invested in its continued use for the community. It now serves a large rural area. Like many other English villages Horsted Keynes is losing businesses that have been there for many years. After the closure of the main village store in 1992, and the more recent loss of the butcher, village hairdresser and photographer, the village garage closed down in June 2007. It was only 20 years ago that the village had two garages, but now it has none, leaving the nearest petrol retailer more than away. Planning permission was granted and the garage site has now been turned into residential accommodation.

Churches

St Giles' Church, Horsted Keynes (NHLE Code 1025684)

The two principal churches are: the

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of t ...

Parish Church dedicated to St Giles and the

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

church of St Stephen which is unoccupied and controlled from the nearest town, Haywards Heath.

Railway station

Bluebell Railway - Horsted Keynes station (4)

The

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in Track (rail transport), tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the ...

, three-quarters of a mile from the village, was on the line from

East Grinstead East Grinstead is a town in West Sussex, England, near the East Sussex, Surrey, and Kent borders, south of London, northeast of Brighton, and northeast of the county town of Chichester. Situated in the extreme northeast of the county, the civ ...

Lewes Lewes () is the county town of East Sussex, England. It is the police and judicial centre for all of Sussex and is home to Sussex Police, East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service, Lewes Crown Court and HMP Lewes. The civil parish is the centre of t ...

. It is now owned and operated by the

Bluebell Railway The Bluebell Railway is an heritage line almost entirely in West Sussex in England, except for Sheffield Park which is in East Sussex. It is managed by the Bluebell Railway Preservation Society. It uses steam trains which operate between an ...

, which is largely run by volunteers and operates using vintage steam trains. The station originally also had a connection with

, between 1883 and 1963.

Notable people

Robert Leighton (prelate) Robert Leighton (1611 – 25 June 1684) was a Scottish prelate and scholar, best known as a church minister, Bishop of Dunblane, Archbishop of Glasgow, and Principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1653 to 1662. He was "noted for his Ch ...

- buried here *

, former

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet and selects its ministers. As modern p ...

– buried here, alongside his wife Dorothy Macmillan

References

External links

HorstedKeynes.com
- website for the village
The Horsted Cahagnes Society
{{authority control English cricket in the 14th to 17th centuries Mid Sussex District Villages in West Sussex