In 1974 a short series of articles appeared in the All Saints’ church parish magazine. They were the recollections of an old lady who, as a girl, had grown up in Crawley Down. Her name was Annie Smith and she had been born, the daughter of Edward and Amelia Smith, at their home on Copthorne Common in May 1850. By the time Annie was old enough to remember, the family had moved into a small cottage which used to stand in the south-west corner of the junction of the Turners Hill Road and Wallage Lane. At that place there were gates across both roads because the Turners Hill Road was a turnpike, established in 1770, and tolls were levied on users of the road at strategic points along its route to pay for its upkeep. A condition on the Smith family’s occupation of the cottage was that they were responsible for collecting the tolls, and that role fell to Annie’s mother. Her father was employed as a gardener at Rowfant House, in those days the home of Sir Curtis and Lady Lampson.
Opposite the toll cottage was the Wallage, then a farm. In the census of 1851 it was also a beer shop and was the home of Annie’s grandfather and grandmother, Edward and Elizabeth Smith. Edward was the Parish Road Surveyor, so it was Elizabeth who sold the beer, assisted by her 14-year-old namesake daughter. The job of the parish surveyor was to maintain the condition of the roads, filling in potholes and clearing ditches to keep the roads from flooding. Annie recalled coaches passing their house on the way between London and Brighton before the opening of the railway station at Grange Road in 1860.
It was the railway that resulted in tragedy for the Smith family, for on Monday 30th July 1855 Annie’s grandfather was fatally injured at Three Bridges station. The Sussex Advertiser reported on the inquest held at Brighton the following week. He and some of his men had been at the station unloading some flints and he had paused to watch the London-bound express come past, but had stepped back onto the line and failed to notice an approaching goods train shunting some wagons. The engine driver could not see Smith who was hit in the back by the engine’s buffer knocking him under the wheels. Despite desperate efforts by the railway staff a doctor could not be found, even along the line in Crawley, so the station master, Mr Savage, put on a train specially to take Smith to the County Hospital in Brighton, but he died of his injuries on the way, between Burgess Hill and Hassocks. Edward Smith was buried at All Saints’ church on the 2nd of August.
Annie Smith attended the village school, which had only opened in 1852. She recalled the master’s name as being ‘Mr Horsen’. This was, in fact, James Hallson who had been appointed, aged 38, in 1859. He was assisted by his wife, Martha, who taught the girls. They and their growing family lived in the school house, which was provided for them rent free.
However, Annie would probably have started there when Mr Hallson’s predecessor had been in post. He was Francis Seaton and he was assisted in his role, initially, by his half-sister Martha Sheard. This arrangement did not last for long, though, for in 1854 Francis married Ann Chandler, the eldest daughter of the local builder, grocer and post-master, Benjamin Chandler, whose self-built house still stands on the west side of the Turners Hill Road just south of the railway bridge. Set into the brickwork at the front is a stone on which are his initials BC and the date 1834. Clearly, Francis Seaton’s tenure as master was short, and by 1861 his wife was a widow and had returned to live with her parents. Ann remarried at All Saints’ in March 1863 to Alfred Colven and went to live in Camberwell, but in a little over two years she too had died, aged only 35.
