1700 To The Present Day

 
There has been no real industrial developmentin Heyshott. Lime working and lime burning were carried out in the nineteenth century and earlier as is shown by the scars on Heyshott Down.
 
The Pulborough to Petersfield railway which opened in 1866, and closed to regular passenger services in 1955, ran just outside the northern boundary of the parish but some Heyshott men found employment on it. One of these was Jack Bridgewater who was a plate layer. Armed with a heavy tool like a sledge hammer, he would tap and check the spring 'clips' holding the rails to the sleepers. Every day, starting at Midhurst, he walked up one side of the line as far as Petworth, where he met another plate layer who had walked from Pulborough, and he would then return down the other side to Midhurst.

After the First World War an entrepeneur set up an iron and brass foundry on the edge of the Common, partly to provide employment for returning soldiers but, following an accident, the enterprise failed and, despite a later attempt to establish a paint factory, the only surviving sign is in the name and structure of the Foundry Cottages.

Foundry Cottages, 2010 - Click image to enlarge

Bus transport grew and declined. Older residents remember a Heyshott man, 'Flecky' Cooper, so-called because he kept angora rabbits, flecks of whose fur stuck to his clothing, starting a motor bus service with a blue bus in the 1930s. This was followed later by a yellow bus, owned by another operator, until B.S. Williams of Hants & Sussex took over the routes from Heyshott to Chichester, Midhurst, Graffham and Lurgashall in 1939. People remember having to get out of heavily loaded buses to enable them to climb the hill from Bex Mill. The Ambersham railway bridge also presented a problem to double-decker buses which required skilful steering to achieve clearance as this photograph shows.
 

Click to enlarge, plus 2007 image
 
On the afternoon of 31st October 1946 , the bus hit the bridge!