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Wivelsfield

Civil parishes in East SussexLewes DistrictUse British English from July 2016Villages in East SussexWivelsfield
Woodley House, South Road geograph.org.uk 1529957
Woodley House, South Road geograph.org.uk 1529957

Wivelsfield () village and the larger adjacent village of Wivelsfield Green are the core of the civil parish of Wivelsfield in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. The villages are 9.3 miles (15.0 km) north of the city of Brighton and Hove. Wivelsfield parish is located on a ridge that divides the watersheds of the Rivers Adur and Ouse. It lies south of Haywards Heath, and east of Burgess Hill, which are both comparative newcomer settlements, owing their existence to the coming of the railway in the 1840s. Wivelsfield is much older and was first mention is in an 8th century charter whilst Bronze Age and Roman finds indicate even earlier origins of settlement in the area.The settlement tended to be small farms often grouped together rather than a central village and that is still marked by the two distinct areas called Wivelsfield and Wivelsfield Green, as well as smaller hamlets lying on the border of the old Haywards Heath to the north, Valebridge Common to the west and Ditchling Common to the south.Despite Wivelsfield being as biodiverse as the best protected places in the Weald, it lies in a landscape without statutory protection and county planners are allowing an eastwards movement of settlements from Burgess Hill.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Wivelsfield (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Wivelsfield
Ditchling Road,

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
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Wikipedia: WivelsfieldContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 50.97 ° E -0.09 °
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Address

Ditchling Road
RH17 7RE , Wivelsfield
England, United Kingdom
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Woodley House, South Road geograph.org.uk 1529957
Woodley House, South Road geograph.org.uk 1529957
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Nearby Places

Jacob's Post
Jacob's Post

Jacob's Post is a post outside the old Royal Oak pub just inside the north of Ditchling Common to the east of Burgess Hill, in Lewes district, East Sussex, England. It is named after a traveling peddler named Jacob Harris (also known by his Jewish name of Yacob Hirsch) who in 1734, according to local lore, killed the landlord of the Royal Oak pub's wife and a serving maid. He also slashed the landlord in the throat but he survived. After stealing a coat worth ten shillings, Jacob Harris ran north to Turners Hill and stayed at the Cat Inn. The landlord managed to round a party of searchers for Jacob that included soldiers and discovered him at Selsfield House hiding in the chimney by inadvertently flushing him out when they lit the fire. Harris was prosecuted and executed for his crime at Horsham gaol and his body was returned to hang in a gibbet at the northern end of Ditchling Common next to the highway and near the scene of his crime.The post where he hung took on a life of its own as people believed infertility and other ailments could be cured by touching the post. If you got a splinted from the post it was said you would never get toothache. Consequently people tool small pieces of the post when visiting. This continued well into the 19th century despite the original post being replaced by another. A number of ballads have been written about the event. The next recorded Jew in the Brighton area was in 1766.The post used to be visible from the road but the Common here has returned to scrub and has to be accessed via a track that starts from the farm drive or nearby Bankside Farm. The post itself has a metal bird nailed to the top. The Royal Oak pub was demolished for housing in 2017.