A souvenir guide to Haywards Heath, published in 1911, likened the town to a fair lady – happy in having no past.

The fair lady, as the guide points out, was born out of the stubborn refusal of Cuckfield landowners to embrace the ‘sullying touch’ of the iron horse.

The ‘coach killing evil’ was kept at arm's-length and diverted to the east through the heath.

Before the railway, Haywards Heath was little more than a vast tract of wasteland or ‘hothe’ belonging to the Manor of Hayworth.

Laden with gorse, heather and clumps of scotch pine, this peaceful wilderness was a haven for wildlife and the occasional highwaymen.

The tranquility of the area was shattered in 1837 when rowdy, hard drinking labourers from as far afield as Ireland descended en-masse.

‘Swearing like a navvy’ was absorbed into the English language as upwards of 5,000 men, including horses and steam driven machinery, gouged and hammered their way through the countryside to build the London to Brighton line.

After a remarkable feat of engineering which involved dangerous tunnelling and the construction of the Balcombe viaduct with its 11 million bricks, the railway opened down to Haywards Heath on July 12, 1841 – and all the way to Brighton two months later.

Although firmly on the map, Haywards Heath had a population of less than 200 in the early 1850s. But rapid expansion was heralded by a significant event in 1859.

In July that year, a pale, emaciated woman called Jane Woods arrived by train from London.

In poor health and suffering from visions of angels and devils she had been removed with 41 other female patients from the infamous Bethnal Green asylum (Bedlam) in London.

Escorted by two policemen they must have struggled to walk the one and a half miles to the newly opened Sussex County lunatic Asylum (later St Francis Hospital).

Jane Woods was the first patient at the massive Victorian edifice on the south eastern outskirts of Haywards Heath.

The asylum, along with the railway, became the area's biggest employer and by the turn of the century housed well over 900 patients.

Victorian labourer’s cottages sprang up in ribbon development along Asylum Road – now Colwell Road, Gower Road, and Sussex Road – the heart of Haywards Heath's brick making industry.

Lured by the good life in the ‘countryside' London workers left the grime of the city and headed for Haywards Heath – prompting writer Augustus Hare to describe the town as ‘A colony of cockney villas’ in 1894.

The Sergison family sold off parcels of land from their estate, and businessmen built or rented fine Victorian and Edwardian villas near the railway station along Muster Green, Oathall Road, Paddockhall Road and Lucastes Avenue.

St Wilfrid's Church in South Road acted as a spiritual link drawing the inhabitants of these piecemeal developments together.

Completed at a cost of £6000 in 1865, the church is said to mark the exact geographical centre of the whole of the county.

By 1931, the population of Haywards Heath had swollen to 7,344, intensifying the pressure for cheap, affordable housing.

The town's first council house was built near New England Road in 1924 and Franklands village followed in 1935 The Franklands estate was provided by the town’s Rotary club as a model village of houses and flats to be let at low rents.

By the 1930s Haywards Heath had become an urban sprawl made up of communities served by their own shops.

One such community was the area around Sussex Road which became firmly established as Co-Op territory, where shoppers could buy all their household and food requirements.

The expansion of South Road through the 1930s created a town centre and sounded the death knell of the corner shop. Strategically positioned close to Co-op territory, Woolworths opened in South Road in 1934 with everything costing 6d or less.

Sainsbury's open in the same year. Boasting a mosaic floor and tiled walls the shops sold very few tinned goods– butter was patted up by hand, and sugar and dried fruit was sold loose.

South Road’s large stores, which included George Hilton's furniture shop, contributed to the decline of Boltro Road as the town's commercial heartland. 

Boltro Road, described by Gower Road resident Lillian Rogers as ‘the elite' of Haywards Heath, housed the main railway entrance until 1932.

The road attracted businessmen who used the nearby railway to shift coal, building materials, grain and cattle. Corn merchant George Bailey, and auctioneer, estate agent and valuer Thomas Bannister who among the early entrepreneurs.

The road boasted a fine array of upmarket shops, including a gentleman’s outfitters, photographic studio and music store, and became the administrative heartland of the town.

It was home to the Cuckfield Rural District Council offices, the mid Sussex Joint Water Board, the court buildings, the police station, the Mid Sussex Times, the telephone exchange, main post office and a variety of banks and commercial businesses.

To the West was the corn exchange and Bannisters cattle market, which opened in 1867.

Cattle were transported on railway trucks and by the end of the 1930s the market had become the 12th largest in the country.

Butchers stood shoulder to shoulder with housewives at the Christmas turkey sale. And children jostled to watch the animals as they were paraded for auction.

As a child growing up in the 1940s and 50s Celia Smith recalls: “The market was a very exciting place. They sold everything, eggs, chickens, calves, sheep and even secondhand bikes.”

The market closed in 1989 to make way for Sainsbury's superstore and Haywards Heath lost an important institution which had shaped his identity as a market town for over a century.

Today, Boltro Road is a shadow of its former self for the absence of a long-term parking facilities contributing to its decline as the town’s commercial centre.

Business activity is increasingly dominated by larger enterprises such as Europ Assistance Holdings and Lloyds in Perrymount Road.

Today, Haywards Heath has a population of 23,000 and new town signs proclaim it to be the ‘Heart of Mid Sussex’. It continues to be the administrative heart with the Mid Sussex Magistrates courts and district council offices – but its ‘soul’ is difficult to define.

Communities, once served by their own traders and businesses, have blended into an amorphous whole. As for its commuter population, a commentator wrote in the Mid Sussex Times, on February 12, 1924: ‘We can quite understand that the majority of them are too fatigued on returning home to interest themselves in Haywards Heath affairs, but it is obvious that the town must suffer in more ways than one because they belong to the town and are not of it’.

Eminent local historian Wyn Ford wrote of Haywards Heath in 1998: ‘The old intimacy has gone, to be replaced by a more impersonal atmosphere in the town may now be seen indeed as the metropolis of Mid Sussex.’

Acknowledgement: 1911 souvenir guide to Haywards Heath. The story of Haywards Heath by Wyn Ford.