The history of Hassocks

Hassocks Parish Council was created in 2000, combining the old parishes of Clayton (meaning settlement or farmstead on the clay) and Keymer (cow’s mere), describing lush meadowland. Hassocks is now home to around 8,500 people and host to countless visitors, with its glorious views of the South Downs, this area has appealed to travellers and settlers down the centuries.

Today, Hassocks combines the quiet rural life with cosmopolitan connections and all modern services and communications. But its past can be overlooked, and we can forget that the village’s roots stretch into prehistory, testified to by the discovery of Neolithic clay spoons and Stone Age flint tools.

Hassocks’ roots

It is thought that metal workers visited the area at the start of the Bronze Age in about 600 BC. The remains of a Bronze Age fort can be seen at the top of nearby Wolstonbury Hill.
Artefacts and remains from Stone Age, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman and Anglo-Saxon times have been found in the area, including evidence of a Roman road leading towards a settlement at Stonepound. An Anglo-Saxon site was found during landscaping at a Hassocks golf course.

A large Roman cemetery was discovered near what is now the Stonepound Crossroad.

The Saxons decided on the vista at nearby Clayton for the site of St John the Baptist Church, the chancel arch of which is 900 years old, and the church has yielded medieval wall paintings of national importance.

The Church of St. Cosmas & St Damian in Keymer, is one of only a handful in this country dedicated to these patron saints of physicians and surgeons. The existence of a church at Keymer is noted in the Domesday Book, though the majority of the present church dates from the 1860s. The Saxons decided on nearby Clayton for the site of St John the Baptist Church, the chancel arch of which is 900 years old, and the church has yielded medieval wall paintings of national importance.

On the road to London

The Friars Oak Inn in London Road was used by Sherlock Holmes’ creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as the setting for his adventure tale Rodney Stone. Originally, the pub stood on the other side of the road and had connections dating back 500 years. It was named after a big oak tree beneath which monks from a long-gone monastery handed out food to the local poor. The radical poet and educationalist Elizabeth Hitchener’s (1783–1821) family owned the pub where she ran a school for some years.

The railway

The arrival which made the most impact on the area came in the 1840s – the railway. The opening of Hassocks Gate as the station in 1841 heralded the beginning of the village as it is it today. This was followed by housing development in the centre to cater for the new commuters.

Prior to the piercing of the South Downs in 1844 the area was isolated from Brighton and the south coast. The Clayton Tunnel would provide the area with one of its most recognisable landmarks. During construction of the line and tunnel, over 6000 workers and 900 horses were used. Over 400 of the construction workers (‘navvies’ or navigators) were housed in huts near the line or in cottages around Keymer parish.

Hassocks Station was originally named Hassocks Gate after the tollgate which stood on the main road near Stonepound now the current crossroads of the A273 and B2116.

In 1881 the station was renamed Hassocks (the name deriving from ‘hassuc’ having the same Old English root as ‘tussock’ and hence meaning ‘a field with rough tussocks of grass’).

Fittingly for its railway connections, Hassocks also boasted two famous sons of the railway world – John Saxby (1821-1913), who invented the signals and points system which ended the risk of the man in the signal box changing points just as trains went over them, and Magnus Volk (1851-1937), the German designer of Brighton’s famous electric railway.

The railway also made Hassocks a handy destination for the pleasure-seekers of the Edwardian age who came to enjoy the tranquil scene in the Orchard Tea Gardens. A strong rival to Burgess Hill’s Victoria Gardens and Hurstpierpoint’s Chinese Pleasure Gardens, Hassocks’ playground, which opened in 1908, had splendid shrubs and planting, a boating lake, and most memorable of all, a massive helter-skelter.

Although the gardens and fairground are no more, the village’s same picturesque surroundings remain today.

In 2025 the Hassocks Rail Group created three posters with pictures of Hassocks Station through the ages starting. The posters can be viewed online and on the northbound platform of the train station.

War Memorials

The Keymer and Clayton War Memorials blog features the story of every man commemorated on the villages WW1 and WW2 memorials.

Hassocks 1951 – Junction of Grand Avenue and Keymer Road.
Photograph by Peter Brooks. West Sussex Record Office, PH 15092.
Reproduced by permission of the County Archivist