Mayfield, Sussex

Historical Description

Mayfield, a village and a parish in Sussex. The village stands 7½ miles S of Tnnbridge Wells, and has a station on the L.B. & S.C.R., 42 miles from London. It is situated on an eminence, commanding extensive views of the circumjacent country; was anciently known as Magavelda; is a polling-place for East Sussex; was formerly a market-town; has a post, money order, and telegraph office, and fairs on 30 May and 13 Nov.; and forms a good centre to tourists for exploring a considerable extent of picturesque scenery. Acreage of the civil parish, 13,668; population, 3217; of the ecclesiastical, 2238. The palace belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury; was surrendered to the Crown in 1545 by Archbishop Cranmer; was given by Henry VIII. to Sir Henry North; and passed to Sir Thomas Gresham, the Bakers, and the Kirbys. It was erected at the village in the 10th century by St Dnnstan; was the deathplace of Archbishops Mepham, Stratford, and Islip; was also the meeting-place of ecclesiastical councils in 1332 and 1362; gave entertainment in the time of Sir Thomas Gresham to Queen Elizabeth; exists now as a convent; includes a magnificent banqueting-hall, 70 feet long and 39 wide, which is used as a Roman Catholic chapel. St Dunstan's Well, walled round, adjoins the kitchen apartments. The scene of St Dunstan's fabled contest with the devil likewise is in the near vicinity. The palace was purchased in 1858 by F. Cordrey, Esq., who sold it a few years later to the Duchess of Leeds, by whom it was transferred to the Brothers of the order of St Francis Xavier. It has been restored and enlarged. Isenhurst, Sunny Bank, and Wood-leigh are handsome residences in the neighbourhood. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester; value, £450 with residence. The church is Later English; has memorial windows to two successive vicars, father and son, the Revs John Kirby, and contains numerous monuments to the Baker family, and tablets to the Aynscombe and the Sands families. There are Baptist and Congregational chapels. A girls' orphanage, a large block of building in the Collegiate style, after designs by Pugin, was erected in 1866 at the expense of the Duchess of Leeds at Bletchingly, near Mayfield, and has accommodation for 120 girls and for a community of superintending religious ladies.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Mayfield from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Mayfield (St. Dunstan))

Maps

Online maps of Mayfield are available from a number of sites:

• Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• Google Streetview.
• National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
• OpenStreetMap.
• old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
• Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)

Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Sussex newspapers online:

• Mid Sussex Times
• Chichester Express and West Sussex Journal
• Sussex Agricultural Express
• Hastings and St Leonards Observer
• Sussex Advertiser
• Brighton Gazette
• Bexhill-on-Sea Observer