THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF BEWBUSH: A FURNACE, A MILL AND A MANOR
By Ian Mulcahy
First created 24 December 2021
Old Britain Home | Historic curiosities of Crawley
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The general perception of Bewbush is of a modern 1970s/80s Crawley housing estate lacking in any kind of history, but this is far from the reality. Bewbush is a manor dating back at least as far as the Norman conquest, in the rape of Bramber, which was held at the time of Domesday (1086) by the De Braose family, a prominent Norman dynasty which had played a major part in the Conquest of 1066 and were suitably rewarded for their efforts by way of lands granted to them by William the Conqueror. In the intervening years the Manor of Bewbush has been owned by some very well-known people and has been home to a manor house, a deer park, a Tudor era furnace and subsequent grist mill, several medieval farmsteads and two mansions. This is the hidden history of Bewbush.
CONTENTS All pictures and maps can be clicked or tapped for full resolution images, which will open in a new window. Many people know, or at least know of, Ifield Mill and Millpond, but not so many are aware of Bewbush Furnace/Mill pond and the furnace and subsequent grist mill that harnessed the power of the water which it stored. This is hardly surprising as the pond was allowed to drain and silt up during the Second World War and had ceased to be of any practical use by 1861.
WHERE WAS BEWBUSH FURNACE & MILLPOND?
The simplest way to describe its location is to say it is underneath the north east corner of Kilnwood Vale. In its prime it was larger than the nearby Ifield millpond (which itself originally incorporated what we now know as Bewbush Water Gardens, at least as recently as 1841 when it is shown as a single body of water on the tithe map of that year), but you can see from the maps as we gradually move forward in time that the pond gets progressively smaller up to 1954, when the Ordnance Survey map shows the area as marshy land.
It is not known exactly when the pond was created, but it was certainly in existence by 1567, when the furnace was first documented, and probably before 1563. The 900ft (275m) long bay, which is up to 10ft (3m) high and dammed Bewbush Brook, causing the shallow valley to fill with water, was most likely constructed sometime during the decade prior to this. What we now know as Ifield Millpond was created in the same manner in the mid to late 1560s at a point just downstream of where Broadfield Brook and Bewbush Brook converged to form Ifield Brook. The forked tail of Ifield Millpond provides a visual demonstration of the paths these two water sources took to their convergence which probably occurred somewhere near - maybe just after - the island.
HOW DID IT WORK AND WHAT DID IT PRODUCE? The initial use of the pond was to provide a consistent flow of water to power Bewbush Furnace. Some sources, contemporary to both the furnace and to us, refer to the site as Ifield Furnace, but this should be distinguished from Ifield Forge, which used the power of Ifield Millpond and was 200ft (60m) to the west of the Mill which stands at Ifield today. Bewbush furnace was a blast furnace which were typically stone or brick built into a cone shape, covering an area of perhaps 24sq ft (2.25sq m) and standing up to 30ft (9m) high. The egg shaped cavity, perhaps 3m high, inside of the already ignited furnace would be loaded with a mixture of roasted ore and charcoal and a pair of huge water powered bellows would force a continuous blast of air into the column of ore and fuel, superheating the mixture and melting the ore. At the mouth of the furnace would have been a bed of sandstone where the iron would be cast into moulds; the resultant lumps of iron were known as ‘sows’ and ‘pigs’. These names derive from the practice of the sandstone mould having a large long channel down the middle, along which the molten iron would flow, with several smaller channels at right angles so giving the appearance of a sow feeding her little piggies! Make no mistake, this was dangerous work that didn’t have the health and safety regulations, protective clothing or tools that we take for granted today. The furnace would have produced somewhere in the region of 8 tons of iron every 6 days, using 24 loads of 11 quarters of charcoal and 24 loads of 18 bushels of pre-roasted ore. A quarter is 28lbs (12.7kg), but a bushel measures volume so it is hard to give an accurate weight, but it’s likely that a bushel of ore would have weighed somewhere in the region of 105lbs (around 47.5kg), so each load would have weighed 1,890lbs (850kg) and each 6 day blasting session would have used over 20 tonnes of ore and 3.3 tonnes of charcoal! Rising to the top of the molten mixture would have been the slag; the glassy carbonated waste product and this waste would have been drawn off sporadically and dumped nearby to cool down.
WHO OWNED THE LEASE TO BEWBUSH FURNACE? The freehold of the Bewbush Estate, or
the
Manor of Bewbush, switched sporadically between
Crown ownership and that of various members of the nobility (see
The history and
buildings of The Manor of Bewbush, below), but the estate was leased
to various lessees who would then sub-lease various constituent
parts of the estate, such as land, homes, farms and… furnaces! This
section will detail the lessees of the estate. Before we get to the
people we should note that the furnace is first documented in 1567 when
it was sending sows of cast iron to Burningfold Forge, a little way
south of Dunsfold in Surrey. This is quite some distance to
transport half ton bars of iron, when considered in the context of
the roads and methods of transportation available at the time, and
the creation of Ifield Hammerpond (now Millpond) immediately
downstream from the furnace was an endeavour of practicality and
economics. The furnace was almost certainly
constructed before 1563 by a gentleman called John Mayne who died in
1566, passing ownership to his son Anthony who is also documented as
being the owner of Ifield Forge in 1608 when the leases of both
sites were transferred to John Middleton. It is likely that Mayne
Junior constructed Ifield on inheriting Bewbush, increasing the
value of his newly acquired asset by providing a nearby forge and
thus reducing transport costs considerably. Middleton held the lease to both
sites until his death in 1636 when they passed to his son Thomas.
More on the Middletons shortly. In 1654 the lease of Bewbush Furnace and pond were part of a large conveyance of lands ‘in Bewbush & Shelley’ to Bray Chowne for £5,000. Using modern points of reference, the Manor/Forest of Bewbush was roughly the land in the vale between Little Buckswood [Cheals] and Faygate on an east to west basis and, on the north to west line, from the Ifield to Rusper Road to Forest Road, joining Pease Pottage & Colgate, encompassing Buchan Park and Holmbush. Shelley was the land to the south east of Bewbush (see maps below). Colgate, Faygate, Pease Pottage Gate and possibly Tilgate are named with reference the gates controlling access through the medieval manor, though Tilgate could equally have been the gate to Worth Forest. The name of Pease Pottage Gate later changed meaning and came to reference the Tollgate, but the original name pre-dates the Turnpike Act so undoubtedly referred to the forest entrance. The village lost it ‘gate’ suffix soon after the abolition of turnpikes in 1877.
The Ifield site was retained or regained by the Middletons and it was this family who built the first two corn mills, in 1660 and 1683. The initials of Thomas Middleton (junior) and his wife Mary, along with the date 1683, are carved on to a stone tablet that was salvaged from the second mill and used in the construction of the current mill in 1817. This tabler can still be seen today.
WHO OPERATED BEWBUSH FURNACE? Mayne Senior granted Edward Fenner a 21 year sub-lease on the furnace who subsequently passed it onto his brother, Thomas. In 1567 or 1568 Thomas sold the lease to a Thomas Ilman of Ifield who then mortgaged it to Roger Gratwick (Senior) on 16 February 1569 for £74.13.4 (£74.67). On Gratwick’s death in 1570 his son, also named Roger, inherited the lease. Title to the lease then gets a little messy as Ilman was heavily in debt and known to have been defrauding both friends and business associates. Evidently the mortgage was never discharged as by 1574 the lease was back with the Ilman family, now with Richard (presumably the son of Thomas) and his business partner Ninian Challinor. The next recorded change of ironmaster doesn’t occur until 1608 when the estate lease holder, John Middleton, also operated the furnace. On Johns Death in 1636 his heir, Thomas, employed Walter Burrell & Jeremiah Johnson as ironmasters.
WHAT BECAME OF BEWBUSH FURNACE? The furnace is last documented as producing iron in 1642. Many sources put this down to a lack of fuel as a result of the forests of Bewbush and Shelley having been badly managed and being totally stripped of timber. This theory undoubtedly derives from records showing that in a seven year period from 1589 56,000 cords of wood, worth £4,200, were logged across Bewbush and Shelley for use at Bewbush and Ifield. A cord in Sussex at the time is recorded as being 126 cubic feet of dry wood, which would have weighed roughly a tonne. A lack of timber, along with the discovery of hotter burning fossil fuels in the north of the country, was ultimately the death of the Weald area as a major player in the Iron industry. An alternative theory, and one that I am inclined to lean towards, is that the furnace was destroyed in 1643 by Parliamentarian forces during the Civil War. It is documented that this is the fate which befell Ifield forge, less than a mile to the north east, and this was confirmed during 2014 when works to repair the dam at Ifield Millpond revealed the charred remains of the forge close to the current mill. I have also been supplied with anecdotal reports of metal detectorists unearthing Civil War era shot in the area around St Margaret’s Church in Ifield Village, but these finds have not been recorded anywhere. A few paragraphs ago I mentioned the Middleton family and this is where the fate of the furnace (and indeed the forge, as the lease to both sites was owned by the Middleton family) becomes something of a paradox. John Middleton (b. after 1558, d.1636) of Hills Farm Place was the MP for Horsham, a constituency of which the Crawley area was a part, from 1614-1629. Parliament was then suspended for 11 years by King Charles I and by the time that the House was re-instated in 1640, John had died and the seat was taken by his son Thomas (b.1589, d.1662). Being an MP, Middleton had to be seen to be supporting Parliament when the Civil War broke out, but he harboured Royalist sympathies and his forge at Ifield, the freehold to which was Crown property at the time, was involved with the supply of ordnance to the Crown, hence its destruction by the troops of Sir William Waller. Middleton was later charged with aiding the Royalists, but the charges were not proven. He was re-arrested in 1648 following a Royalist uprising in Horsham, despite remaining as Horsham’s MP. Bewbush Furnace was last recorded as being in production in 1642, but that doesn’t mean that production ceased at the time and there is no reason to not suspect that it was working until the point that the Parliamentarians, having fought a minor battle with the Royalists on Ifield Brook Meadows, didn’t march for a further mile and destroy the furnace after burning the forge to the ground. In 1653 the furnace appeared on a list of working furnaces, but it is possible that this was based on outdated information, though it is equally possible that it had been brought back into production as it formed part of the transfer of land from the Middletons to Bray Chowne in 1654. Other sources say that it is noted as ruined in the 1653 list. By 1664 the furnace was certainly ruined, and did not operate again.
WHAT PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF BEWBUSH FURNACE REMAINS TODAY? Well, if the truth be told, very little, but the most obvious remnants are probably equally the least obvious. If you know the area, then you would have walked along the bridle path that links the football pitches at Bewbush West playing fields with the foot crossing over the railway. That bridle path is atop the pond bay; you are walking along the man-made structure that held the water back to create the pond. Next time you walk along that path look down and you’ll notice that the surface of the path isn’t just mud, but is metalled, and it is metalled with the furnace slag that rose to the top of a column of molten ore and was drawn for disposal up to 450 years ago. The furnace workers would have dressed the track like this so that the wagons delivering the ore and charcoal and taking away the cast iron for forging could pass unhindered, especially during wet periods when their wheels would have otherwise disappeared into the mud and clay.
Those familiar with the area will also be aware of the rusty sluice gate (a surviving artefact from the later corn mill that existed here – more on that later) where Bewbush Brook passes through the bay and continues on its way to the Watergardens, which were originally a part of Ifield Millpond. The area downstream of the path where the water emerges from the bay marks the likely site of the wheel pit; this is where the large wooden wheel which powered the bellows would have been sited, though some experts think this could have been the spillway and that the wheel pit was 11 metres to the north, where a now dry shallow channel remains. Late 19th century maps show my interpretation to be correct, and there is no reason to suspect, or evidence to show, that the spillway and wheel pit were ever switched. There are a couple of further physical remains that are a little less obvious and the first is 5 or 6 paces downstream from the wheel pit where there are the remnants of a low wall which would have been part of the tail race – the water being directed away from the wheel after its power had been harnessed. Whether this belongs to the furnace era or the mill era is open for discussion. The same discussion could be had about the rotten remains of some timber, including a wide post, in the same area. Was this part of the framework for the wheel and, if so, the wheel of the furnace or the mill? There is also a small scattering of slag to be seen in the stream and wheel pit.
To the north of the wheel pit is a brick built wall adjacent to the bay which is undoubtedly the remains of the later mill, but hidden away under moss, creepers and tree roots is what appears to be a much older, crumbling sandstone wall. Is this a small surviving part of the furnace itself? If it is, where was the stone quarried? 500 metres away as the crow flies (or 550m if you wanted to avoid the pond), in the middle of a field to the north of the railway and on a sandstone ridge, is a huge hole in the ground now surrounded by, and filled with, trees. Was this a stone quarry? Perhaps it was used as a charcoal or roasting pit after the stone was removed, or perhaps it was a mine pit? No one knows what the purpose of this pit was, but it is easy to imagine the stone being quarried here and taken by cart to the site of the furnace. The Tithe Map of 1840/1 shows the field which hosts this feature as being named 'Pit Field'.
WHAT FOLLOWED BEWBUSH FURNACE? When the estate lease was sold to Bray Chowne by the Middleton family in 1654 they included a furnace that was either in ruins or had been rebuilt. The furnace was certainly noted as ruined by 1664, I think it is probable that the list of 1653 was based on outdated information or has been misconstrued. At some point after 1664, on the site of the furnace, a grist mill was constructed. A grist mill was a mill where local farmers brought their own grain which the miller then ground and returned to them as flour, minus his percentage; The Millers Toll. Dating information on Bewbush Mill has so far proved pretty elusive, but an idle pond would not have been desirable for Chowne and it is therefore likely that the mill, or a mill at least, was constructed soon after this time; as a point of reference the first mill at Ifield was operating within 17 years of the forge being destroyed.
With so little information available, it is impossible to date the mill, but it seems reasonable to suggest a build date of perhaps sometime in the 1670s unless the pond was allowed to lay idle for decades. The earliest documented existence of the mill is 1787, but this doesn’t mean that it wasn’t in operation before this date. A precise year that it ceased to work has also proved elusive, but by using old maps, which were considerably more detailed by the 19th century, it is possible to date the its demise as a working mill to somewhere between 1841 and 1874. Further investigation has unearthed documents pertaining to the construction of the Three Bridges to Horsham railway from 1838 (see Were there any other buildings in the area, below) which name the miller, and resident of nearby Pondside Farm, as Henry Stepney and the owner of both properties as Thomas Broadwood of Holmbush (See The Buildings & History of The Manor of Bewbush, below). Stepney died in the 3rd quarter of 1842 and Broadwood in 1861. By this point in time the build-up of 300 years of silt would have diminished the strength of the water flow onto the wheel, negatively affecting the efficiency of the mill, and dredging would have been a costly exercise, so did one of these deaths spell the end of the road for Bewbush Mill? We can say with a high degree of certainty that Stepney’s death wasn’t the end of the road as the 1851 census lists the uniquely named Thornville Royal Knight as being a miller at Bewbush Mill. We also know that the death of Thomas Broadwood, on 6 Nov 1861 didn’t prompt its closure, as the census of 7 April 1861 shows the resident of the mill to be Thomas Pickford, whose occupation is listed simply as farmer; there was no longer a miller at the time of Broadwoods death. A miller is said to have been noted in the Bewbush area in documents dating from 1862, but details are vague and the record probably refers to a windmill, as the Tithe Map of 1841 shows a field called ‘Windmill Field’ to the west of Bewbush Manor House. Perhaps this windmill was built to replace the water mill? So we can, with confidence, date the closure of Bewbush Mill to sometime between 1851 & 1861. The mill building was subsequently
demolished in 1931 while the pond itself remained in water well into
the 20th century and was eventually allowed to drain and silt up
during the Second World War. It was later used as a landfill site
for inert waste as Crawley New Town developed and is now
disappearing under the Kilnwood Vale development, though current
plans suggest that some of the area of the pond, at least, will be
designated as ‘parkland and open space’. The tail end is earmarked
for ‘office space’.
WHAT PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF BEWBUSH MILL REMAINS TODAY? There is not a lot left to see, but as already mentioned a fair chunk of wall remains below the bay and an iron sluice gate is extant on Bewbush Brook at the point where it passes through the bay.
In the footprint of the mill I discovered, amongst rubble and shards of ceramics, a small complete but lidless glass vessel and a sealed jar of Vaseline! In the same area I also found a small piece of clear glass proclaiming “MILK PHONE HORSHAM 84”. The knowledgeable historians to be found on the Facebook group Memories of Horsham found an entry in a directory dated 1939-1941 giving the phone number of Rushams Road Dairy as 884. As still happens today, when available phone numbers run short a digit is added to existing numbers, increasing the number of combinations that can be used. As the bottle therefore pre-dates 1939 and the mill was demolished in 1931 I am certain that this milk bottle, along with the other artefacts, was on a shelf in the mill when the wrecking ball crashed into it and managed to escape the subsequent site clearance.
A short distance away, just north of the
bridle path that leads to Ifield Millpond can be found a partially
buried large cylindrical stone with a large square hole through the
centre, which becomes a much smaller circular hole, and some form of
iron machinery that is slowly being engulfed by a growing tree. It
is likely that these are both relics from the mill, but there is a
possibility that they derive from Mill Farm.
WERE THERE ANY OTHER BUILDINGS IN THE AREA? A stone’s throw to the north of the mill was Mill Farm, a small outfarm dating from the early to mid-19th century; it was certainly in existence by 1840 when it is shown on the Tithe Map. The farm house was demolished in 1976, but a flat area of land with young trees on it to the north east of the junction of the two bridle paths is a visual record of where it stood. During the demolition a millstone from the old mill was discovered in the foundations of the farm house.
Immediately to the north of the pond was
Pondside farm. The only documentary evidence of this farm that I have so
far managed to find is its appearance on the maps of 1795 and 1816 and
its inclusion in two planning documents for the Three Bridges to Horsham
Railway line. The first plan, dated 1 Mar 1838, shows the line cutting
Ifield Millpond in half as it does now, but then, instead of turning
east towards Crawley, it continues on a straight north easterly line
passing Ewhurst Place, The Old Martyrs and the County Oak before bending
around the hill that Rowley Farm sits atop, via Lowfield Heath, joining
the London to Brighton mainline just south of the current Gatwick
Airport station. The second plan, dated 29 Nov 1844, was for the line as
it is today. The construction of the track, which opened on 14 Feb 1848,
removed all traces of Pondside Farm. It may be that the farm was
destroyed when the initial plans for the railway were submitted, as it is not shown on
the Tithe Map of 1840/1
THE HISTORY AND BUILDINGS OF THE MANOR OF BEWBUSH The earliest recorded evidence of human activity in the Bewbush area comes in the form of worked flints which were discovered in the 1980s in what is now the rear garden of a house at the end of Chetwood Road, backing onto the A264 Horsham Road. The find included 4 polished axes, a pick, arrowheads, knives, scrapers, chisels and hundreds of pieces of waste flint, all dating back to the Neolithic period which means they are 4,300 – 6,000 years old. The earliest documented mention of Beaubusson; French for 'beautiful bush', so named by the Norman owners, is from 1285 when it was referred to as a ‘park’ (most likely a deer park south of the modern Horsham Road where the land raises to the High Weald in the areas we now know as Holmbush, Buchan Park and Cottesmore) and the manor is referred to in land transfer papers in 1315. By 1413 the spelling had been amended to Beaubush. There was a settlement in Bewbush on a large moated site by 1326 when a manor house is first documented. The house was rebuilt in the late 15th or early 16th century and underwent considerable alteration in the 17th century. In around 1850 the timber framed house was encased in brick and painted white. The house, in modern day Francis Edwards Way, still exists as does approximately half of the moat - to the north and west of the site - whilst the southern part forms a shallow depression approximately 20cm deep. The eastern part can be assumed to be buried under the road. On the other side of the modern road is the barn to Bewbush Manor, a large 17th or 18th century barn that is now used as a church. Both buildings are grade 2 listed and the moated site is a Scheduled Monument.
Bewbush was evidently fertile as the land was said to be being farmed from five timber built farmhouses in records which date to 1650. It is probable that one of those was the Manor House itself and another would almost certainly have been Little Buckswood, the earliest parts of which date to 1495 and can still be seen in the grounds of Cheals Garden Centre. Other candidates include:
After the male line of the De Braose family died out in 1326 the ownership of the Manor reverted to the Crown and was granted to various members of the nobility, including the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Nottingham and the Earl of Surrey. The estate returned to Crown ownership in 1562 and by 1705 it appears to have been owned outright by John Middleton (a descendant of John & Thomas Middleton; see Who Owned the Lease to Bewbush Furnace, above). From 1787, the estate became known as Holmbush, and the Manor of Holmbush is documented in 1818. After 16 years in the hands of Lord Erskine, the Lord Chancellor, the estate was bought in the early 1820's by Thomas Broadwood, a renowned piano maker who supplied one of his creations to Beethoven in 1818 (which he is reputed to have kept for the rest of his life). The Holmbush Mansion, a grade 2* building that is visible to the south of the Horsham Road between Kilnwood Vale and Faygate, was built to the design of Broadwood in 1823 near to the site of a house that had evidently existed for a number of years prior to 1498, when it was noted as being repaired, and survived into the 19th century. The estate remained with the Broadwoods until 1871 when it passed to the MP for Horsham, Colonel James Clifton Brown and Browns Son, Brigadier General Howard Clifton Brown, MP for Newbury in Berkshire, owned the estate until his death in 1946. The house remained in the family, firstly becoming a private school and then being converted to flats and sold in 1979, but from 1880 the land of the estate was gradually being broken up and sold. 600 acres belonged to a gentleman called Lionel Brooks by 1958, and he sold 300 of these acres to Crawley Borough Council in 1973 – land which was subsequently developed into the Bewbush Estate that we know today.
A further remnant of the estate is the mansion on Buchan Hill, now occupied by Cottesmore School. A house was first built there in the early part of the 19th century when the estate was owned by Lord Erskine, who named the property after the title of his father, Henry Erskine, the 10th Earl of Buchan. Buchan Hill remained a part of Holmbush until 1880 when Howard Clifton Brown split it, all 1,000 acres, from the Holmbush estate and sold it to a gentleman called P.F.R. Saillard, who almost immediately demolished the old house and built the large mansion, over the course of 1882 & 1883, which still exists today. On Saillards death in 1915 Buchan, which had now grown to 2,500 acres through acquisition, was inherited by his daughter who lived in the house until 1925. The estate was then split and 1,500 acres were sold in 1928, with the rest being disposed of in 1937. The house was bought by Cottesmore School in 1946 and they remain as current occupiers. The chain of ponds in modern day Buchan Country Park, now owned and managed by West Sussex County Council, were created between 1874 & 1895 for fishing purposes.
So that is Bewbush; not just a modern council estate, but the remains of a large Norman Manor with a considerable history.
For details of the iron industry across the wider Crawley area, from 400BC to the mid 1700s, please visit http://www.iansapps.co.uk/oldbritain/crawley/iron.html For details relating to the six medieval moated manors with surviving features in the Crawley area, please visit http://www.iansapps.co.uk/oldbritain/moats.html
Sources Texts: - The Historical Geography of the Wealden Iron
industry Web: -
https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/
Text & photographs (where watermarked) © Ian Mulcahy. Contact photos@iansapps.co.uk or visit my 'Use of my photographs' page for licensing queries (ground level photographs only). |
Pictures taken with and and Some books related to the history of Crawley |
