It is difficult today to realise the enormous change in the wealden landscape that the hectic years of industrial development involved. The clearing of much of the Weald in Norman and later medieval times had been relatively slow and unspectacular; while the areas, specifically reserved as woodland, had been carefully tended by those concerned, whether lords of the manor, burgesses, or individual farmers.

 

The system of 'coppice and standard', by which selected oaks were encouraged to grow by adequate spacing, had ensured timber for the building of both houses and ships. There had been continual trade with London and the larger towns, including as we have seen, a valuable export trade with the continent. Instead of these carefully husbanded forests, there was now a barren wilderness.

 

Quick and immediate profits had led to a lack of concern for the future. There was little or no replanting at the time. Dotted among the now barren hills and valleys were dozens of lakes, artificially created by dams to provide water power for the hammers and bellows, or washing facilities for cleansing the ore.

 

Glass furnace, 16th century

 

Today, surrounded by pleasant woods, these form part of the attraction of the Weald; in the seventeenth century they were surrounded by treeless wastes. But this is only one side of the picture; the thousands who had been attracted as labourers when the industry was at its height were now without employment, and a period of distress followed which certainly contributed to the reckless and desperate character of some of the smuggling gangs. Another consequence was the ruination of the roads.

 

There is no reason to believe that travelling in medieval Sussex was particularly difficult or that the roads were bad; by the seventeenth century they had become notorious. As early as 1585 an Act was passed to compel the iron-masters contribute to the roads which they used. The Act provided that for every six loads of charcoal or ton of iron carried, one cartload of 'sinder, gravell, stone, sande, or chalke' should be laid on the highways and that the Justices of Peace were to see that this was done.

 

This Act seems to have been ineffective and unenforcable, but it is the first attempt to make the user contribute, in proportion to his use, to the cost of maintenance. It is the amplification of this principle, in the first Turnpike Act in 1663, which led directly to the Turnpike System which revolutionised road transport in the eighteenth century

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There was much in the Sussex iron industry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which foreshadowed the industrial revolution of the eighteenth. The new blast furnaces were in part financed by capital provided by London merchants, the landowners receiving shares in the product in return for land and timber concessions-an early form of Joint Stock enterprise.

 

The industry was also dependent on a supply of free mobile labour, and certainly recruited a great part of its labour force from the landless proletariat created by enclosures during the Tudor period in other parts of England. It is one of the paradoxes of history that the earliest large-scale manifestation of those developments, which become the basis of the later industrial revolution, should have occurred in this now rural residential county.

 

Cowfold Church Tower

 

One building, and only one, dominated the village in the Middle Ages - the church.

 

The manor house might be, and often was, close to the church, and also the priest's house, but, relatively, these were unimportant. The church was the symbol of community; with the exception of the chancel it was maintained by the parish and the whole community was involved in its embellishment, its enlargement, or its improvement. It was the one building that reflected the prosperity or decline of a neighbourhood. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries churches were not so frequently rebuilt or enlarged. In some areas, as in the Adur valley, from Bramber to New Shoreham, churches actually fell into decay.

 

In other places improvements rather than extensions of space were made, and often seem to be motivated by inter-parish rivalry. This is perhaps best seen in the building of bell towers to house the more impressive peals of bells now fashionable. For example, the neighbouring parishes of Cowfold, Henfield, Thakeham and Washington all added towers within a few decades of each other.

 

Only in a few cases were churches completely rebuilt-Poynings, Etchingham and Arundel, towards the end of the fourteenth century, Pulborough, with the exception of the chancel, in the fifteenth century-the first three mainly at the charge of the Lord of the Manor, the fourth through a legacy from its priest.

 

Compared with East Anglia or the West Country, church building in Sussex in the later Middle Ages was relatively modest and reflects its relative decline compared with these other parts of the country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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