Mayfield

Mayfield is generally held to be one of the finest villages in East Sussex.

Mayfield has an elegant main street full of attractive late medieval buildings which were funded in the main by the profits of the 16th and 17th century Sussex iron industry.

Mayfield History

Once owned by the Kings of Wessex, the Manor of Mayfield can trace its history back to the ninth century, when its ownership passed to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The princes of the church built a palatial residence here called Mayfield Place.

In 1556 four Protestant Martyrs burned for heresy came from Mayfield and the area around Mayfield had a strongly dissenting population, which later became strongly Puritan.

The Martyrs are remembered in style each year with the Mayfield Bonfire. There is also a fine Festival of Arts in Mayfield each spring.

After the iron industry faded away, Mayfield became a hotbed of smuggling, with more or less everyone in the village wrapped up in the web of the smugglers in one way or another.

Places of interest around Mayfield

Interesting places in and around Mayfield include:

• Mayfield Place is the site of what is left of the former palace of the Archbishops of Canterbury, now part of St Leonards-Mayfield School. The highlight is the former great hall which dates from the 13th and 14th centuries;
• The Church of St Dunstan is a 13th century building on the site of a much earlier wooden church built by St Dunstan. Mayfield church has overcome more than one calamity, having been burned down in the 14th century and torched by lightning three centuries later. Perhaps these disasters have been the work of the devil, wreaking his revenge on St Dunstan for tweaking off his nose with a fire iron - a Mayfield legend;
• The Catholic Church of St Thomas of Canterbury;
• Mayfield Baptist Chapel;
• Colkins Mill Church which is a Free Church in Station Road;
• Argos Hill Windmill is a restored windmill a mile north of Mayfield which now needs plenty of TLC to save it.

More about Mayfield

Mayfield is part of the parish of Mayfield and Five Ashes.

Mayfield travel notes

By road, Mayfield lies next to the A267 main road.

The nearest Railway station to Mayfield is three and a half miles away at Crowborough which is the nearest town. Heathfield is five miles to the south of Mayfield.