Ticehurst

Ticehurst
The Bell Inn Hotel
Ticehurst  Ticehurst shown within East Sussex
Area	32.5 km2 (12.5 sq mi) [1]
Population	3,873 (Parish-2011)[2]
– density	273/sq mi (105/km2)
OS grid reference	TQ689302
– London	39 miles (63 km) NW
Civil parish	Ticehurst
District	Rother
Shire county	East Sussex
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	WADHURST
Postcode district	TN5
Dialling code	01580
Police	Sussex
Fire	East Sussex
Ambulance	South East Coast
EU Parliament	South East England
UK Parliament	Bexhill and Battle
Website	Ticehurst Parish Council
List of places UK England East Sussex

Coordinates: 51°03′N 0°25′E / 51.05°N 0.41°E / 51.05; 0.41

Ticehurst is both a village and a large civil parish in the Rother district of East Sussex, England. The parish lies in the upper reaches of both the Bewl stream before it enters Bewl Water and in the upper reaches of the River Rother flowing to the south-east. The parish includes the parish wards of Ticehurst, Flimwell and Stonegate.^[3] The linear settlements of Berner's Hill and Union Street lie between Ticehurst and Flimwell. It lies to the south-east of Tunbridge Wells, and is about ten miles (16 km) distant.

History

Ticehurst is not mentioned in the Domesday Book, although the manor came into being in the 14th century; Pashley Manor^[4] is also mentioned at the same time, and is within the parish.^[5]

The village's name derives from Old English; there are two possible derivations. The most plausible one is that it means wood on the Teise from the river; the second roughly translates as 'The wooded hill where young goats graze', ticce(n) + hyrst.^[6] (1248, Tycheherst)^[7]

Governance

Ticehurst is part of the electoral ward called Ticehurst and Etchingham. The population of this ward at the 2011 census was 4,679.^[8]

The villages

Ticehurst

There is an active village club,which runs regular social events, and a monthly newsletter "News & Views" is produced by a team of volunteers. The village school serves both Ticehurst and Flimwell.^[9] There is also a comprehensive website covering most of the activities in the community.

Ticehurst House Hospital (now part of the Priory Group) specialises in the treatment of psychiatric disorders and is located in the village. Samuel Newington opened the original Ticehurst House in 1792 as a place dedicated to the care and treatment of psychiatric illness.^[10]

Bookshop

In the centre of Ticehurst there is a dry cleaner, hairdresser, greengrocer, chemist, Indian takeaway, car salesroom, car repairer and MOT centre, general village shop (incorporating a post office), model shop, estate agency, a bank (National Westminster), two antique furniture dealers and two pubs, the Chequers Inn & the Bell Inn Hotel (which reopened in 2012 following a complete refurbishment), the Greedy Goat Cafe, a fishmonger and locally reared meat supplier at The Fish Shed, and a café within Newington Court. A secondhand children's clothing shop called Merry Go Round opened in 2015. Artichoke Gallery opened in 2014.

The village is the headquarters of the Antiquarian Horological Society.

The village is also home to the first pick-your-own fruit farm to open in Britain, Maynard's Fruit Farm, made The Times "Top 50 places to eat outside in Britain" list.^[11] Outside the village there are dairies at Northiam and Stonegate, a bakery at Bodium, family butcher in Etchingham, a smokery and two more pubs at Three Leg Cross and Dale Hill.

One claim to fame is that the Scottish singer/guitarist Bert Jansch lived in Ticehurst in the late 1960s and recorded tracks for his 1971 Rosemary Lane album at his house in the village.^[12] Ticehurst was also the final residence of Evelyn Waugh's first wife, Evelyn Nightingale.^[13] The village church, St Mary's, was the venue for the wedding of her son, the journalist and theatre critic Benedict Nightingale, to the author Anne Redmon.^[14]

Pashley Manor Gardens is promoted by the Historic Houses Association and by the Campaign to Protect Rural England.^[15] The gardens hold an annual tulip festival each spring. The event in 2016, between 22 April and 7 May, has 30,000 tulips, with over 100 varieties.^[16]

Flimwell

The village is linear in shape and is the largest of a group of settlements, some of which contain some large residential properties, to both west and east of the main road. Other settlements are Union Street and Dale Hill to the west, and Seacox Heath to the east. Including the surrounding woods and fields, Flimwell covers an area of approximately 860 acres (350 ha), of which only approximately 5% is built-up.

Stonegate

South-east from Ticehurst and due north-east from Burwash, is a small settlement, Stonegate.^[17]

It came into being at the same time as the railway line from Tunbridge Wells. The station at Stonegate has hourly train services to London (Charing Cross and Cannon Street) and to Hastings. The next stop from Stonegate to London is Wadhurst and towards Hastings is Etchingham.

In Stonegate, there is a Church of England primary school and the Anglican church of St Peter.^[18]

Religious sites

The three village churches are:

• St Mary's Church, Ticehurst, a 14th-century parish church dedicated to St Mary the Virgin^[19][20]
• St Peter's Church, Stonegate
• St Augustine's Church, Flimwell^[21]

Transport

There is a railway station nearby, at Stonegate (until 1947 it was called Ticehurst Road; and before that Witherenden); and there is a bus link to Wadhurst railway station.

Surname

The name Ticehurst is also used as a surname. It is not known whether this surname refers to the village Ticehurst or to a similarly named sub-manor of nearby Burwash which has since fallen into disuse. The surname was used as long ago as 1264^[22] and was used continuously for hundreds of years by a family living in Ashburnham from at least 1432.^[23]

In 1881 the surname was found almost entirely on the south coast of England, with the highest concentration of Ticehursts being located in Sussex Ticehurst Surname at Forebears but the name has since spread further afield in the UK and also abroad. There is a Ticehurst Surname DNA Project.

References

External links

Media related to Ticehurst at Wikimedia Commons