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Danehill Village Around 1900. Key to numbering below. On mobile photos first. Scroll down for related t.ext. Based on original work by Jennie Marten and the late Phil Lucas.

1 Cherry Ripe 1930

2. Old Crocodile

3. Hillside and Hope Cotts

5. Village store

6. Previous Danehill Farm

8.Danehill Farm c1914

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10 Reading Room

11 Fairview

12 Victoria House

13a New Smithy

15 Blacksmiths House

21 Trinity Chapel with cottages 19 on left

23. Shoemaker (rear cotage)

24 Wheelwright's house and yard

26 The Bakery

27. Newsagent

28 Bootmaker

29 White House c 1450

1. Cherry Ripe Cottage: present in 1851 census, rat-trap brick bonding (Bricks on edge)



2. Crocodile Pub. Click thumbnail for the full story.

3. The earliest reference is in 1661 when Roger Oakes held a cottage there. After several owners, it comes into the hands of a branch of the Awcock family in 1752 who held it until 1831. In the early part of the 19th century, The old cottage was demolished and a pair of cottages were built in “rat trap” bond. Photo 1980.

4. 5  Strict Baptist Chapel (4) , built in 1823 alongside the cottage (5) which had replaced the smithy cottage about 1790: the smithy having been moved to a site in Freshfield Lane. The cottage became the minister's home and, to provide an income, he established a shop there. Jennie Marten remembers the baptismal vessel with steps down into it.

6, 7 Behind the present Danehill Farm stood a much earlier building (7) which Margaret Holt dated to about 1550. This was the original farmhouse with its barn (6). The 4 acres of land straddled the Horsted Keynes/Fletching boundary. House abandoned in the 19th century. Click thumbnail photo

8. Danehill Farm and Barn did not in fact become a farmhouse until the 1860s. The site was occupied by 1629 when John Awborne inherited a messuage and three roods of land from his brother Edward. Held from 1740 by the Awcocks, a family of butchers. Sold in 1920 to Lady Decies who seemed to deal in everything. See thumbnail advertisement.



10 Reading room and Social Club. Built by Mr Hardy of Danehurst for the workers when the new church was being built. Rebuilt as the current Social Club.

11. Fairview Cottages were built in 1894 by WilliamHoadey of Danehill Stores. Until 1945 number 2 was the Police House. See the blue light in the photo.


12. Victoria House. Edward Hoadley built this house “The Firs”. for his own use. It was the Vicarage from 1939 until the present one was built in the grounds in 1988.
13 Old Smithy. We know that by the 1830s and almost certainly earlier there was a blacksmith's on the land adjoining the house now known as The Forge (15). The site for the first smith's shop on the site is (13) on the map, The building was demolished in the late 19th century.
13a New Smithy. Blacksmith’s & petrol pumps at the Forge in the 1920s. George Etherton, in leather apron was the last blacksmith, with brother, Edmond and uncle Edmond. The building is now part of Curtaincraft.
14 Ivy Cottage built in the 19th century.
15 The Forge. Click here for details and photos
16 Fern Cottage The house stands on part of the land that went with The Forge and probably built in the 18th century
17 Knells Farmhouse. The land was sold in 1588 but the first written record of a house is 1634. it had one chimney and an inventory taken on the death of William Knell, in 1730, shows a kitchen, parlour, passage, brewhouse, milkhouse and buttery on the ground floor, two upstairs rooms, an attic and a closet.
18 In 1630 this building is described as 'half a barn'. It was demo;ished in the 19 century. The first scout hut was built on the site.
19 and 20 Cottages built on the waste. 19 was a pair of cottages built in the 19th century. 20 was built about1770 and was originaly a shoemaker and latterly a wheelwright.
21 Holy Trinity Chapel. In 1835 The Countess of Sheffield laid the foundation stone of the new “Chapel of Ease” on part of Danehill green. The new brick building was in the parish of Fletching, previously people would have travelled to the Parish Church there. After Danehill became an Ecclesiastical District in 1851 it was known as Holy Trinity Church. The building was severely damaged by fire in 1887, it was repaired and served the parish until All Saints Church was built on “Windmill Hill”. The building was demolished in 1893, the War Memorial was erected on the site in 1920.
22 Toll House. The house had a small garden, it was built sometime between 1813 and 1839 and was pulled down after the turnpike tolls were abolished in 1865. On the 1841 Census The Toll Gate shown occupied by James Bennett, aged 35, and his wife Harriet, aged 34, and four children.
23. Little Danewood North and South. This pair of cottages was built around 189o on Church Hill, north of the Wheelwrights shop (24). They may have been built to replace the cottages demolished in the Windmill Field opposite. The first occupants were a shoemaker, Alfred Thomas Warnett, and a tailor, William Morley.
24.Little Danewood East and West, Wheelwright. The older part of the building, on the East, was built by James Nimrod Langridge before 1861.  A later addition, now Little Danewood West, was built before 1886.


25. Rose Cottages. Numbers. 1 and 2 were built before 1875and Number 3 added a little later.

26. The Old Bakery. Details.


27 Photo shows1930s view of Rose Cottages, The Corner Shop and St Crispens taken from the “Windmill Field”. On the left of the photograph is the well that served the cottages once standing here. Details on the Corner Shop.

28 St Crispins
This was built by Crispen C. Newnham at the time of his marriage in 1926 and the ground floor of the house contained a shoe shop and workroom Cris came to Danehill in 1921 setting up his business in the shed on the north of Rose Cottages (27). The was his first advertisement in the Parish Magazine in March 1922 -


29 The White House that we see now, for so long a village Inn and farmhouse, later a grocer's shop and Post Office, a butcher's, telephone exchange and a tea room, is now a private residence. Click for the whole story.