About | cuckfieldconnections

Welcome to 'Cuckfield Connections'!
Please use this site to share your local experiences and stories; whether past, present, brief or longer-term, it would be good to hear from you. If you live locally, have ancestral connections here or just have a Cuckfield story to tell or an old photograph to show, please email us so we can share it on this site.

The authors

Andy Revell

Andy Revell was born in Cuckfield, son of much respected deputy headmaster of Warden Park School, Jim Revell. Until his mid teens, Andy grew up in the village and went to Haywards Heath Grammar School.

His career has been dedicated to the teaching and learning development profession. Subjects include Primary School teaching skills (PGCE), English language, literature, communication studies, media studies, film studies, drama, integrated science and sports. All this in seven teaching placements over a 37 year period.

Andy introduced the progressive self-learning Kumon study system to Cuckfield in January 2013. This tailored approach helps students build on their knowledge and to progress at their own pace. Through the Covid lockdown, Andy coached and mentored students who were anxious to build on their knowledge and not compromise their futures.

But he has had a rewarding life experience beyond teaching too, working in a hospital, in a theatre and at an auctioneers. He has also been based in a several locations: Birmingham (20 years), Wolverhampton, Southampton and the New Forest.

Andy lives in Cuckfield and has four children and four grandchildren and ‘is immensely proud of them all’! He has been volunteering at the museum for 25 years and has done two stints as a Trustee spanning eight years and is a mine of local history knowledge.

His hobbies include sports, film, theatre, music and reading poetry.

He launched the Cuckfield Connections website in March 2018 to document family history of the village solicitors - the Wallers. But the scope of the site has since been expanded to help share the ancient town’s forgotten secrets. He has been able to answer many readers’ questions about the fascinating town - and delights in responding to the enthusiastic feedback that this site attracts.

Read about my family’s links with Cuckfield which stretch back over several generations.

Malcolm Davison

Malcolm’s family moved to Ledgers Meadow, Cuckfield, from Datchet near Windsor in 1961. He also went to Haywards Heath Grammar School and was active in several local clubs and would later become a commanding officer in the Sealed Knot based in the village.

Here he met and married a Cuckfield girl in 1974 and today are proud of their two children and two grandchildren. Lynne and Malcolm’s parents lived in Cuckfield until 2003.

Andy and Malcolm knew each other in the early 60s, they lived just a hundred yards apart. Their writing partnership began in September 2020, and decided to step up on Cuckfield Connections output to an article a day during lockdown - something they have kept up ever since. Andy and Malcolm publish articles on alternate days.

Malcolm is a retired corporate communicator and a keen local historian. During his 40 years as a communicator, he looked after the archives of three blue chip organisations and written company histories.

He was briefly a junior civil engineer, switched to become a mainframe programmer with Barclays Bank before settling on communications as a long term career - mostly in the construction industry. He published two books on business computing in the 1980s.

In the late 70s he worked for local PR and marketing agencies. For eight years in the 90s he was publications editor for building materials manufacturer the Redland Group. He travelled widely in Europe and North America to meet and interview staff for the group magazine which he published to 40 countries.

He set up a company ‘Writing for the Web’ in 1998 and ran courses on corporate web communications. Clients included banks, local authorities, large corporates, the UN in three countries, the EC in Brussels, the UK regional governments and most of the main Whitehall departments. He retired in 2016.

Malcolm now lives in Burgess Hill. His other hobbies include photography, keyboard playing, he is past President of Burgess Hill and District Probus Club and is currently working on a book for the Brickworks Museum near Southampton.