1700 To The Present Day

 
In the early 1950s demand was such that the Parish Council was concerned about overcrowding on the buses but, by the 1990s, the remaining services were both subsidised and underused.
 
There is no piped gas in Heyshott and, before the last war, electricity only came as far as the northern outskirts on Hoyle.
A request at that time for it to be extended to the rest of the village was turned down because there were 'insufficient gentry' in the village to create enough demand. So everyone else had to wait until after the war.
 
The village playground was established through the efforts of a village commitee in the 1970s.
 
The appearance of the village and its environment has been determined by the land being mostly owned for so many years by the Leconfield, and later the Cowdray, estates. Also important has been the Town and Country planning legislation since the Second World war, aimed at conserving the best features of the natural and man-made environment. At present there is a presumption against housing development in Heyshott, although this does not apply to Cocking or Graffham.
 
At the end of the twentieth century there has been some decline in amenities and community life, with the loss of the Post Office and shop, the limited bus services and the difficulty of keeping village organisations going. Looking to the future, the sussex Rural Community Council forecast in 1997 that 'Rural Sussex will continue its transformation from a shire county of individual country towns and villages to an extended suburban park land serving London and the south east'.
 
Perhaps Rudyard Kipling foresaw this prospect when he wrote, in 1926:

On the Downs, in the Weald, on the Marshes
I heard the old Gods say:
"Here come very many people
We must go away.
 
They take our land to delight in,
But their delight destroys,
They flay the turf from the sheep-walk,
They load the deans with noise."

However those of us who live in Heyshott hope that we and our
successors may long continue to live in such a quiet and beautiful place.

 
This transcription is kindly being written by Deidre Millington, of Nottinghamshire