Here on the heights of Ashdown Forest is a town which, like Haywards Heath, has emerged in the last two centuries, though not for the same reasons. Crowborough has emerged for its health giving properties, like the seaside resorts or Tunbridge Wells for its waters. But for Crowborough, it was for its air – and plenty of it at over 700 feet above sea level and being the second highest point (after Blackdown) of the Sussex Weald (and the wettest and windiest!).
Developed around its cross in the 19th century, Crowborough became a centre for retirees. Indeed, in the days when I used to organise modest local amateur motor rallies, I was cautioned by the RAC, who monitored the sport, not to go either into Crowborough or Mayfield unless the competitors were in military vehicles or Land Rovers because of the danger of being sniped at by retired military gents! And in fact, Crowborough did for a time have a military presence at the Beacon. That, of course, had been one of the points of warning to convey the news of invasion from the coast to the metropolis. Indeed, it was said that one could see the blaze of the Crystal Palace in 1936 from there.
Crowborough has since nurtured many retirement and convalescent homes including some centres of clinical excellence such as the Horder Centre for Arthritis. Sadly, several of the major hotels including The Crest with which I was involved organising conferences in my youth have now gone. For a while, Richard Jeffries, the naturalist, lived in Crowborough, though he is more associated with south London and the Worthing area. But the much more famous resident was of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, born in Portsmouth, educated in Edinburgh, he came here from Surrey to see out his days at Windlesham House on the edge of the common.
Here he indulged his interest in spiritualism and fairies, and wrote some of his notable works. A keen motorist, one of his stories features a car chase from Cross in Hand to Wych Cross on the edge of Ashdown Forest. Sir David Jason also lived for a time at Crowborough.
I recall one particular Crowborough client who always used to entertain, even when bed-bound, with bubbly and smoked salmon sandwiches, in her slightly eccentric house with magnificent view of all of central Sussex and across to the South Downs, at the west of the town near Stone Cross.
Crowborough is still linked to London by the railway, by a somewhat circuitous route that has its station below the town at Jarvis Brook. The centre of the town remains resolutely Victorian, and was, in its hey day, distinguished by two notable hostelries, the Blue Ball on the common and the Boar’s Head down the hill towards Eridge and Tunbridge Wells. So the town remains, on its hill, as a breath of fresh air.
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