Southern Weekly News - Saturday 15 April 1899

A QUAINT SUSSEX HOUSE.

Lovers of picturesque old buildings will regret that another link with the past has just been demolished by the pulling down of the quaint little roadside inn known as the Green Cross, Ansty, Cuckfield.

The house was of the old Sussex cottage type, partly smithy partly inn, a type of house associated with old coaching’ days and which is fast dying out. The house was on the summit of Ansty-hill. It made a pretty rustic picture, was a landmark for cyclists, and it has figured in more than one romance of the famous Brighton-road. It has been replaced by the modern style of village inn, which looks very up-to-date in such a rural spot.

The sign of the Green Cross, now depicted by a cross of green colour, no doubt originated in the site being at cross roads on a straggling green, on which has sprung up the hamlet of Ansty.

Justin Brice

From Herbert Simmons notes on Sussex windmills: “The Green Cross Inn at Ansty, 1½ miles s.s.w of the Whiteman’s Green post windmill, was once known as “The Windmill”, so named on Smith’s ‘Actual Survey of the Roads from London to Brighthelmstone’, published in 1800, on which it is shown in conjunction with Ansty Gate T.P. (Turnpike?). This might suggest an adjacent site, or could refer to Whiteman’s Green Mill although that seems too far away”.

If a windmill did once stand in the vicinity then presumably it have stood on the high ground at Crouchlands Farm? A trig point is marked at TQ 289 231.