Chailey is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. It is located 7 miles north of Lewes, on the A272 road from Winchester to Canterbury. The Prime Meridian passes just to the east of Chailey.
The parish consists of the settlements: South Chailey (which also incorporates South Common), South Street, Chailey (also known as Chailey Green) and North Chailey (which incorporates the North Common).
The parish church is dedicated to St. Peter and is recorded as having been built in 1256. Recently a special service was held to commemorate its 750 years. At one time Chailey had more churches than pubs. The churches being St Peter's, St Martin's (within Chailey Heritage), Chailey Free Church, St John's (now housing in South Common), and St Mary's (now housing in North Common), and the pubs being the King's Head, Five Bells, Horns Lodge and the Swan House. In addition it is believed another chapel was sited near the Bluebell railway.
Chailey is reputed to be the inspiration for the 1969 children's television series Chigley by Gordon Murray, (along with nearby Plumpton as Trumpton and Wivelsfield Green as Camberwick Green).
Notable buildings and areas
The parish of Chailey is large. It is so special because it is one of the remaining areas of the Sussex Weald with heathland Commons. Chailey Common is a Site of Special Scientific Interest that is located within the parish. It also has many areas with ancient woodland. To the north are the parishes of Haywards Heath and Fletching, to its east are Newick and Barcombe. To its south it borders the parishes of Hamsey, St John Without and East Chiltington and to its west, Wivelsfield.
The Church of St. Peter
The parish has a 13th-century church dedicated to St. Peter at Chailey Green (). The large graveyard has two fine old Yews that are over three span girth. The little archaic grassland is unimproved and a Site of Nature Conservation Interest (SCNI), but the parts nearest the church are mown too often and the southern extension are in poor condition. It is worth recording that at least one part of the SNCI (), a relict wet meadow, just north west of The Hooke has been destroyed only recently (2017).
The Heritage Mill
The Heritage Mill is situated on the Red House Common. It is also known as Beard's Mill. It stands beside a yew tree said to mark the centre of Sussex. Records show that mills have stood here since at least 1590. The mill museum is open to visitors regularly.
There used to be a mill on the South Common in South Chailey, opposite where Chailey School is situated, but it has worn away over time.
Chailey Brickworks Chailey Brickworks, now the Ibstock brickworks, (), is one of the oldest factories in Europe, and has been in continuous production for over 300 years. There is deep pit () that is now a blue lake with gorse around its rim. The pit is made from bluish grey Upper Wealden Clay mudstones, with a bold pink stratum. Fossils have been found there, including the early flowering plant, Bevhalstia. There are also trace fossils which are likely to have been made by crustaceans, bands of fossil wood, insect and fish fossils. In Spring nightingales can be heard singing here.
Second World War D Day airfield
Second World War D Day airfield was on the west side of the parish by Townings farm. The RAF cleared the ground in 1942 for the Chailey Advanced Landing Ground. It was largely manned by Polish exile Spitfire squadrons, which supported the Normandy D Day landings in June 1944.
Farmland
The two largest estates in Chailey are the Hooke Estate which covers around a 1000 acres and the Hurst Barns Estate, South Chailey, which covers around 500 acres. The Hooke Estate is between South Chailey and Chailey Common and they include a cluster of working farms in this landscape. There are many fine old oak, beech and hornbeam veterans in the area and there are a few significant clusters of farm fields that have been preserved from the effects of traditional farming by their difficult terrain, or by sympathetic land managers, and which are very different to the 'improved' green dairy pastures we are used to seeing.
At Sedgebrook Farm, south west of Chailey Common, seven fields remain unimproved and are managed for nature. The farm's fields are the centre of a series of wet woods, damp meadows and carr that extend east to Godleys Green (). In late spring the cotton grass and marsh cinquefoil covers many square metres of quaking bog amongst the carr. In Spring the perfume of water mint is widespread and you can find angelica, marsh pennywort, purple moor grass tussocks, sharp-flowered rush, black sedge and bog stitchwort. In late May, a southern meadow has swarms of meadow/marsh plume thistle with soft shaving brush carmine flowers on white-woolly stems, and there's ladys smock, spotted orchids, creeping willow and rare spring sedge. The higher and drier meadow in July, is yellow with bird's-foot trefoil. There are bush crickets, cone-headed heads, large marsh and meadow grasshoppers and 'bloodsucker' soldier beetles. The rushy meadows have water horsetail, sneezewort and clumps of narrow buckler fern in the shadier places.
Towning's Farm () has "an old fashioned air" with fine vernacular farm buildings and a good farm shop and some attractive pigs, poultry and sheep. Several of the fields on Towning's Farm have only been lightly 'improved'. As a result, some archaic vegetation still exists. For example, the pasture along the west side of Bineham Wood has tiny patches of Tormentil and other old herbs (2018). The woodland rides are the last redoubt for these old grassland species, but straw laid for the Pheasants in several of these woods can only harm that relict vegetation. Bower Farm too (), to the south, has a dairy herd and some old buildings, like Towning's Farm, including an outhouse with herringbone ironstone walls.
Southam Farmhouse is a Tudor, timber framed, but modernised is to the west of the relatively new Southam Wood. The area was once part of the heathy South Common until its enclosure in 1841. Although new, just inside the wood, where the footpaths fork east of the farmhouse, is an ancient hornbeam dubbed 'The Octopus' (), its many tendril-like branches writhing and wrapping around each other. At the north end of the wood, east of the footpath is a veteran beech with '1945 Audrey and Bill' carved on the bole next to two hearts pierced with an arrow.
There are a number of notable working farms in the area but there are also a number of wealthy owners who have gained or inherited wealth from non-farming means who utilise the farms. Many of them have bought a farm as a private nature reserve, as at the lovely archaic meadows of Vixengrove Farm, Chailey. These landowners display varying degrees of empathy to public usage, from hostility to open-hearted delight. This seems to be so at the lovely archaic meadows of Vixengrove Farm, Chailey.
Described in its listed building citation as "probably the most interesting house in Chailey parish" the 400 year old Wapsbourne Farmhouse () is a traditional L-shaped, timber framed, three storey building, with diamond shaped leaded panes in its casement windows, and big brick chimney stacks. The name means 'bourne path' (werpel) and perhaps referred to the partly lost track from Wapsbourne Gate and Farm westwards to the defunct Hunt's Gate crossroads, still marked by a huge veteran oak pollard, (), hidden in the hedge where the footpath turns off from Butterbox Lane.
Commons
In the Middle Ages the Sussex Weald was a land of big commons, hunting chases and parks and it was only in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that the majority were eradicated. A few have lived on though even to this day, and they still play this role as they are still an important part in community life and many hold important species such as aboriginal grasslands. To the north of the parish, Chailey Common is one of the remaining and best areas of heathland Commons in the Sussex Weald. Further south, Markstakes Common is also a well-maintained and regularly surveyed common. However, Chailey South Common is an example of one of the many lost commons to the county and is now only commemorated in name. It lay between South Chailey and South Street. Southam Wood was a part of the Common until it was enclosed in 1841. It was the last commons on clay ground in this part of the Sussex Weald and has the ruins of an old mill. The Warren (), south of Lane End Common, is a lost piece of common land too. It still has some rides and glades that maintain a heathy character and since new management by the Sussex Wildlife Trust, seventeen of the rare marsh gentian have been seen there.
Chailey Common
Chailey Common is a Site of Special Scientific Interest that is located within the parish. Due to local pressure groups the area has been preserved as common land, is maintained for wildlife and been split into five areas and enclosed: Romany Ridge Common, Red House Common, Pound Common, Memorial Common and Land End Common. You may see white park cattle, ponies, or heath sheep out on the common for conservation, maintaining the natural equilibrium of species through grazing. The site, which is part of a nature reserve, is of biological interest due to its heath habitat, defined by its cover of ericaceous species (ling, cross-leaved heath and bell heather). Ericaceous vegetation occurs over about a mile, from south to north.
The area has glorious displays of purple heathers in high summer, and it hosts many rarities. Fifty years ago Garth Christian saved the marsh gentian and they can still be seen there today with their trumpets full of tiny stars. Meadow thistle, sundew and round-leaved sundew are still just present also, thanks to careful nursing. It is one of the few sites left in the Sussex Weald with bog asphodel too. Woodcock, nightjar, bloody-nosed beetles, minotaur beetles, purse web spiders and black headed velvet ants frequent Chailey Common.
Chailey Common was one of the last sites in the Sussex Weald that you could find Silver Studded Blue butterflies but they may also be gone now. It is a shame that the site has no dedicated ranger to or that the Friends of Chailey Common website does not appear to have an open annual species reports as the Friends of Markstakes Common does.
If you walk from Lane End Common through Warr's Wood there a long sliver of heathland underneath the power lines with lousewort, ling heather, purple moor grass and heath grass, tormentil and heath speedwell.
Markstakes Common
Markstakes Common () is a wooded common that it has received loving management for the last 50 years. Species like saw-wort and heath milkwort can be found on the heath. In recent surveys, too, special wetland plants have been refound like bog pondweed, marsh pennywort, ragged robin and wild hops, as well as dormice, adder, grass snake, and great crested and palmate newts. There are a number of bat colonies on the Common including the very rare 'old forest' Bechstein's bat colony recently discovered. Other species seem to have gone like the rare heath dog violet, lousewort, heath cudweed, sheep's fescue and sheep's sorrel.