THE ECCLESIASTICAL PARISH OF BUXTED & HADLOW DOWN
Administrator
Diocese of Chichester
The origin of the name Buxted comes from the Saxon Bochs stede (place of the beeches). Around the year 680, Caedwaller, King of the South Saxons, granted to the See of Canterbury certain manors in Sussex, with the Archbishop becoming Lord of those manors. As such, he had both civil and spiritual jurisdiction over them - although Buxted was in the diocese of Chichester, the Bishops had no control over it.
This grant stood until 1845 when, by an Order in Council, it was altered and Buxted placed under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Chichester, while the Archbishop retained only the patronage of the benefice. Until that time, the parish, which had existed since mediaeval times, included the chapelry at Uckfield and was one of the wealthiest in the Deanery of South Malling.
Map of Buxted Park estate by John Pattenden of Brenchley, showing Buxted Place (now the Buxted Park Hotel) with St Margaret's and village houses. Circa 1654
Hover to see church & village detail
One of the most ancient industries in Sussex was iron-smelting, and Buxted was an important centre of that trade. The Romans established a forge in Buxted but by Anglo-Saxon times it had been abandoned, as neither Buxted nor the iron industry there is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. The revival of the industry didn't take place until 13th Century.
Ralph Hogge of Buxted was one of the most famous iron-masters in England. In the employ of William Levett, the then Rector of Buxted who was a pivotal figure in the use of the blast furnace to manufacture iron, Hogge worked with the French cannon-maker Pierre Baude. In 1543, they suceeded in casting the first iron muzzle-loader cannons in England.
Ralph is assumed to have built Hogge House, which still sits at the entrance of the drive leading to St Margaret's church. His name and the date 1583 is recorded in a rebus on the front of the house.
In 1798, a survey of the Buxted Estate was commissioned, showing farms and dwellings to the north and east, close to St Margaret's. A few years later, Buxted Park was purchased by the then Prime Minister, Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, which began the decline of the old village.
Wanting to extend his deer park and gain more privacy, plus uninterruped views of the surrounding countryside from his mansion house, Lord Liverpool offered to build new houses for the inhabitants of the village, anywhere in the parish they wished, if they would move. The tenants refused and stayed where they were. In consequence, Lord Liverpool declined to carry out repairs to village properties, hastening their decay. Gradually, this forced the tenants to vacate their delapidated homes and gradually establish a new village a mile away, on the other side of the valley.
On the 2nd Earl's death in 1828, the estate passed to his half-brother, Charles Cecil Cope Jenkinson, the 3rd Lord Liverpool. Within a few years, all the old village houses had been demolished and, by 1836, nothing remained of the old village around the church.
c 1783 St Margaret's & village, from a sketch by S H Grimm.
c 1798 St Margaret's can be seen close to village houses and the stocks.
c 1798, A drawing entitled 'A house in the occupation of Rev Mr Evans. The spire of St Margaret's can be seen in the background.
By 1840, this extract from the 1840 Tithe map by John Adams, Surveyor, of Hawkhurst, shows very few buildings left around the church.
Partially influenced by the relocation of the village, the ecclesiastical parish of St Mary Buxted was created in 1885 and the new church, in what is now Church Road, consecrated by the Bishop of Chichester on 11 June 1887.