In the Cuckfield Urban District, which comprises Haywards Heath, Cuckfield and Lindfield, 13 high explosive bombs and three groups of incendiary bombs were dropped, and a flying bomb crashed into the cemetery grounds at Haywards Heath, but no-one was killed in the area.

During the whole period of the war one person was seriously injured, and 16 sustained minor injuries. Three houses in the area were destroyed, and serious damage done to to others. There was slight damage to 495 houses, and glass was broken in 107 others. The number of alert signals was 682.

Most of the damage occurred towards the end of 1940. The first incident of note was on a Thursday night during September 1940, when a stick of four high explosive bombs fell near the Council houses at Bentswood. Haywards Heath, damaging some of them.

On Saturday evening, September 28th, 1940, a bomb exploded in the back garden of a house on the west side of Haywards Road, Haywards Heath. Damage was caused to nearby houses in that raid and also in Wood Ride and Park Road, and a large number of houses on the opposite side of Haywards Road suffered badly from the blast, while the windows of shops and other buildings in South Road, Ashenground Road and Sussex Road were broken.

The bomb was the last of a stick of four which fell across Ashenground Woods.

At Brook Street, Cuckfield, on December 6th, 1940, a bomb exploded in the middle of the rood, wrecking two houses. There were a number of casualties, though not serious ones.

There were three incidents in the area on the night of December 21st, 1940. One bomb fell in an open held at Burntwood Farm, Tyler’s Green, Haywards Heath. Another dropped in the Haywards Heath recreation ground, near the railway station. A person walking through the ground at the time received a spinal injury, but recovered following hospital treatment.

The third fell on an isolated lodge in Hanlye Lane, Cuckfield, and the occupants were trapped underneath. They managed to crawl safely out and walked to a hospital not far away for treatment before anyone could arrive to assist them.

On July 11th, 1944, a flying bomb crashed in the Haywards Heath cemetery grounds, but no damage was done in the cemetery.

Sources

'War in East Sussex' a booklet published in 1945 by Sussex Express and County Herald.

German Luftwaffe bombing of vehicle and countryside, November 1941. Wikimedia public domain image.

With thanks to Steve Turner.