East Grinstead

East Grinstead is a town and civil parish in the northeastern corner of Mid Sussex, West Sussex in England near the East Sussex, Surrey, and Kent borders. It lies 27 mi south of London, 21 mi north northeast of Brighton, and 38 mi east northeast of the county town of Chichester. The civil parish covers an area of 2443.45 ha and had a population of 23,942 persons in the 2001 census. Nearby towns include Crawley to the west, Tunbridge Wells to the east and Redhill and Reigate to the northwest. The town is continuous with the village of Felbridge to the northwest. Until 1974 East Grinstead was the centre for local government - East Grinstead Urban District Council - and was located in the county of East Sussex. East Grinstead, along with Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill, as part of the former Cuckfield Rural District Council, came together as Mid-Sussex; moving to the jurisdiction of West Sussex County Council. The town has many historic buildings and is located on the Greenwich Meridian. It is located in the Weald and Ashdown Forest lies to the south of the town.

Places of interest
The High Street contains one of the longest continuous runs of 14th-century timber-framed buildings in England. Other notable buildings in the town include Sackville College, the sandstone almshouse built in 1609 where the Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas" was written by John Mason Neale. The college has sweeping views towards Ashdown Forest. The adjacent St Swithun's Church, stands on the highest ground in the town and was rebuilt in the eighteenth century (the tower dating from 1789) to a perpendicular design by James Wyatt; its imposing building dominates the surrounding countryside for many miles around. In the churchyard are commemorated the East Grinstead Martyrs; and in the south-east corner is the grave of John Mason Neale. The Greenwich Meridian runs through the grounds of the historic 1769 East Court mansion, home of the Town Council, giving the visitor an opportunity to stand with a foot in both the east and west. The mansion stands in a parkland setting. In 1968 the East Grinstead Society was founded as an independent body both to protect the historically important buildings of East Grinstead (and its environs) and to improve the amenities for future generations.

On the outskirts of the town is Standen, a country house belonging to the National Trust, containing one of the best collections of arts and crafts movement furnishings and fabrics. Off the A264 to Tunbridge Wells, there is a 1792 historic house called Hammerwood Park (the first work of the future architect of the United States Capitol) which is open to the public twice a week in summer. East Grinstead House is the headquarters of the (UK and Ireland) Caravan Club.

Local attractions include Ashdown Forest (where the Winnie-the-Pooh stories are set) and the Bluebell Railway, a preserved heritage line with steam locomotives. The town is also the site of Queen Victoria Hospital, where famed plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe treated burns victims of World War II and formed the Guinea Pig Club. The town is well located to visit Chartwell the country home of Sir Winston Churchill, Hever Castle home of Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn, and Penshurst Place home of the Sidney family. Kidbrooke Park (today Michael Hall School), a home of the Hambro family, was restored by the noted Sussex architect and antiquarian, Walter Godfrey, as was Plawhatch Hall.

During the Second World War, the town became a secondary target for German bombers which failed to make their primary target elsewhere. On the afternoon of Friday 9 July 1943, a Luftwaffe bomber became separated from its squadron, followed the main railway line and circled the town twice, then jettisoned seven bombs. Two bombs, one with a delayed-action fuse, fell on the Whitehall Theatre, a cinema on the London Road, where 184 people at the matinée show were watching a Hopalong Cassidy film before the main feature. A total of 108 people were killed in the raid, including children in the cinema, many of whom were evacuees; and some twenty Canadian servicemen stationed locally, who were either in the cinema when it was hit, or arrived minutes later to help with rescuing survivors. This was the largest loss of life of any single air raid in Sussex.

In 2006, the East Grinstead Town Museum was moved to new custom-built premises in the historic centre of the town, and successfully re-opened to the public. The Chequer Mead Community Arts Centre includes a modern 349-seat purpose-built theatre, which stages professional and amateur plays and music (local rock groups to chamber music orchestras), opera, ballet, folk music, tribute bands, and talks. The centre has a large art gallery for temporary exhibitions.

In addition to the nearby Ashdown Forest, East Grinstead is served by the Forest Way and Worth Way linear Country Parks which follow the disused railway line from Three Bridges all the way through to Groombridge and which are part of the Sustrans national cycle network. To the south of the town lies the Weir Wood Reservoir which offers sailing and a nature reserve which attracts an interesting assortment of birdlife. It is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Religious organisations
East Grinstead has an unusually diverse range of religious and spiritual organisations for a town of its size. A broad range of mainstream Christian denominations have places of worship in the town, and several others used to be represented; Protestant Nonconformism has featured especially prominently for the last two centuries, in common with other parts of northern Sussex. Several other religious groups have connections with the town, from merely owning property to having national headquarters there.

The Church of England has four places of worship in the town. St Swithun's Church was founded in the 11th century. Architect James Wyatt rebuilt it in local stone in 1789 after it became derelict and collapsed. Near the entrance to the church, three stones mark the supposed ashes of Anne Tree, Thomas Dunngate and John Forman who were burned as martyrs on 18 July 1556 because they would not renounce the Protestant faith. John Foxe wrote about them in his 1,800-page Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Two other churches are in St Swithun's parish. St Luke's Church in Holtye Avenue on the Stone Quarry estate was built in 1954 to serve the northeast of the town. St Barnabas' Church in Dunnings Road serves the south of the town; the present wooden structure of 1975 replaced an older church built in 1912. The fourth church, in the northwest of the town, is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. Built by W.T. Lowdell over a 21-year period beginning in 1891, the Decorated Gothic Revival church was consecrated in 1905 and has its own parish. It was established by adherents of the Oxford Movement, and services still follow a more Anglo-Catholic style than East Grinstead's other Anglican churches.

Roman Catholics worship at the Church of Our Lady and St Peter, founded in 1898 by Edward Blount of the Blount baronetcy, a resident of nearby Worth. East Grinstead's first Nonconformist church was the Zion Chapel, built in 1810 for the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion. The small evangelical Calvinistic group owned the church until 1980; it is now used by Baptists and is called West Street Baptist Church. Trinity Methodist Church is the much-expanded successor to older places of Methodist worship in the town; the community dates back to 1868. The United Reformed Church community meets in the Moat Church, a former Congregational chapel built in the Early English Gothic Revival style in 1870. Jehovah's Witnesses worship at a modern Kingdom Hall; the community, established in 1967, previously used a former Salvation Army building. The meetinghouse of the LDS Church on Ship Street was built in 1985. A 2007 book also noted the New Life Church—a Newfrontiers evangelical charismatic church—the Kingdom Faith Church, another independent charismatic congregation, and the Full Gospel Church.

The Opus Dei Prelature have a conference centre at Wickenden Manor near the town, and Rosicrucians also have a presence in nearby Greenwood Gate. The London England Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is just over the Surrey border at Newchapel; and the United Kingdom (and former world) headquarters of the Church of Scientology is at Saint Hill Manor on the southwestern edge of East Grinstead. Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard bought the Georgian mansion and its 24 ha of grounds from the Maharaja of Jaipur in 1959, and lived in the town until 1967.

In 1994, a documentary entitled Why East Grinstead? was produced for Channel 4's Witness strand of documentaries. It sought to examine and explain the convergence of such a wide variety of religious organisations in the East Grinstead area. The documentary, produced by Zed Productions and directed by Ian Sellar, reached no definite conclusion: explanations ranged from the local presence of ley lines to the more prosaic idea that religious leaders had settled there because they liked the views.

In World War II
In 1863, the then cottage hospital, Queen Victoria Hospital, was built on its current site in the 1930s. During the World War II the hospital was developed as a specialist burns unit by Sir Archibald McIndoe. It became world famous for pioneering treatment of RAF and allied aircrew who were badly burned or crushed and required reconstructive plastic surgery. Most famously, it was where the Guinea Pig Club was formed in 1941, as a club which then became a support network for the aircrew and their family members. The club still provides assistance for Guinea Pigs, and meets regularly in East Grinstead. The Duke of Edinburgh is the current President of the club. Queen Victoria Hospital remains at the forefront of specialist care today, and is renowned for its burns treatment facilities and expertise throughout England.

During the War, a German bombing run had targeted the town and a bomb hit the Whitehall Cinema where the city’s school children were watching a film, killing 108 and injuring 235. The town was devastated; almost everyone in the town knew someone who lost or had a child injured. As such, the townspeople became very supportive of the patients at the Queen Victoria Hospital. Even though many of the victims were horribly disfigured (often missing limbs, and in the worst cases faces, their faces made up of burn tissue), the townspeople would go out of their way to make the men feel normal. Families invited the men to dinner, and girls asked them to go on dates. Patients of the burn units remember, and cherish, the charity received from the townspeople of East Grinstead.

In the winter of 2010, Claque Theatre produced the East Grinstead Community Play, which focussed on the bombing of the town in 1943, the work of Archibald McIndoe and his team at the hospital and on the Guinea Pig Club and its members. It was performed by local residents.

Redevelopment
The East Grinstead Town Centre Master Plan was adopted on 10 July 2006 as a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD). The scheme arranges regeneration of the town centre in association with Thornfield Properties PLC. As of September 2007 Thornfield Properties has submitted plans to the council for the start of an ambitious development of the Queens Walk and West Street area. It is expected that other redevelopment companies will fulfil targets outlined in the SPD over the next 20 years. Landowners and developers are being encouraged to put forward plans achieve the vision set out in the SDP. The Master Plan is part of a larger scheme which will also see the redevelopment of the Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill town centres.

Crime
Crime rates in East Grinstead are lower than the national average.

Air
Gatwick Airport is 10 mi from the town, whilst Redhill Aerodrome and Biggin Hill Airport are both within half an hour's drive. Hammerwood Park has a helicopter landing site for visiting pilots (3.5 mi from the town).

Rail
East Grinstead has been a railway terminus since 1967, after the line from Three Bridges, to Royal Tunbridge Wells was closed under the Beeching Axe, a rationalisation of British Railways' branch lines based on a report by Dr Richard Beeching, a resident of the town at that time. (See also East Grinstead railway station for history of rail lines). The closure of the line to Lewes, part of the Bluebell Railway, occurred in 1958.

In the late 1970s the town's inner relief road was built along a section of one of the closed railway lines and is named "Beeching Way". It is rumoured that this road, which runs through a cutting, was intended to be called "Beeching Cut", but that the name was altered at the last minute in the interests of formality. Much of rest of the trackbed of the disused Three Bridges to Groombridge line now forms the route of the Worth Way and Forest Way, highly prized linear Country Parks allowing easy access to the beautiful Wealden countryside.

A part of the Lewes line was re-constructed by the Bluebell Railway, a nearby preserved standard gauge railway. The extension work was carried out in stages. The first paid-passenger service departed from East Grinstead station at 9:45 on Saturday 23 March 2013, and the first train left Sheffield Park for East Grinstead at 9:30 a.m. with services running each way every 45 minutes thereafter.

Road
The town lies on the junction of the A22 and A264 roads. For just over a mile, from just to the north of the Town Centre to Felbridge village in Surrey, the two routes use the same stretch of single carriageway road. This is one of the principal causes of traffic congestion in the town.

The town is within commuting distance of London (about 30 miles) and Crawley/Gatwick (about 10 miles) by road. According to the 2001 Census, one in eight residents commuted to Crawley for work with over 98% travelling by car.

Education
Education in the town is provided through both state and independent schools. West Sussex County Council provides seven primary schools along with two secondary schools. All these schools are co-educational and comprehensive. Private secondary education is provided by several day and boarding schools in the surrounding areas straddling Kent and Sussex.

State primary schools

 * Baldwins Hill Primary School - a 100-pupil primary school in buildings opened in 1898. It is federated with Halsford Park Primary
 * Blackwell Primary School - a 200-pupil primary school opened in 1955, moving into new buildings in 2006.
 * Estcots Primary School - a 400-pupil primary school built in the 1970s, moving into new buildings in 2010.
 * Halsford Park Primary School - a 400-pupil primary school, opened in 1958 and now federated with Baldwins Hill Primary
 * Meads Primary School - a 250-pupil primary school
 * St Mary's CE Primary School - a 200-pupil Church of England primary school, originally opened in 1885 moving to current buildings in 1955
 * St Peter's RC Primary School - a 200-pupil Roman Catholic primary school, originally opened in 1885

State secondary schools

 * Imberhorne School
 * Sackville School

Private prep schools

 * Brambletye School
 * Ashdown House

Twin towns
East Grinstead is twinned with:
 * 🇫🇷 Bourg-de-Péage, France
 * 🇪🇸 Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Spain
 * 🇩🇪 Mindelheim, Germany
 * 🇦🇹 Schwaz, Austria
 * 🇮🇹 Verbania, Italy

Landmarks
There are some Sites of Special Scientific Interest within the parish. Stone Hill Rocks are 8 m tall sandstone crags in the south of the Parish. They are of interest as they reveal a three dimension picture of the sedimentary make up of the surrounding geology.

East Grinstead in literature

 * East Grinstead is the destination of the adulterous lovers Norman and Annie in Alan Ayckbourn's trilogy of plays entitled The Norman Conquests. It was chosen because Norman, after some effort, couldn't get in at Hastings. In the 1978 Thames Television version of the trilogy, Norman and Annie were portrayed by Tom Conti and Penelope Wilton.


 * East Grinstead also features in Christopher Fowler's novel, Psychoville (1995), in which the town features as harbouring the fictional Invicta Cross, as well as the eventual New Invicta. The town of New Invicta was later used by Jo Amey in Heist as a safehouse


 * East Grinstead is mentioned in the lyrics to British musician Robyn Hitchcock's song, "Listening To The Higsons". ("The Higsons come from Norwich, but I prefer East Grinstead.")


 * East Grinstead is the home of Harry Witherspoon, one of the lead characters in a musical comedy by Flaherty and Ahrens called "Lucky Stiff".


 * East Grinstead is mentioned a couple of times in Monty Pythons Flying Circus. It was mentioned that several letters come from the "East Grinstead Friday."


 * East Grinstead is mentioned and has scenes set in the town in Torchwood: Children of Earth.

Sports and social clubs
East Grinstead has a Non-League football club East Grinstead Town F.C. who play at East Court.

East Grinstead is well served by local sports and social clubs. Municipal facilities include the King George's Field, named as a memorial to King George V. The King's Centre leisure centre, currently owned and operated by Mid Sussex District Council is located on this land, which was left to the town by a local benefactor. The centre includes an indoor swimming pool and other facilities such as a gym and sports hall. The Council is currently reviewing the provisions of this facility and as part of this is looking at contracting out the management. There are floodlit tennis courts and bowling green at Mount Noddy and also tennis courts and a variety of pitches at East Court. East Grinstead is also home to East Grinstead Hockey Club and East Grinstead Lacrosse Club

Media
The local weekly newspaper is the East Grinstead Courier & Observer, published each Thursday.

The local community radio station is 107 Meridian FM, found on 107 FM and also online.

The local community magazine is RH19 Uncovered