In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Balcombe like this:
BALCOMBE, a village and a parish in Cuckfield district, Sussex. The village stands on a pleasant spot, adjacent to the London and Brighton railway, 4 mile N of Cuckfield; and it has a station on the railway, post office under Cuckfield, a small inn. and a fair on 1 April. The parish comprises 4,786 acres; of which 1,18 are in Highbeach warren. ...
Real property, £3,652 Pop., 880. Houses, 170. The property is divide among a few. Balcombe Place and Wakehurst Place are elegant mansions. A tunnel of the railway, 1,139 yards long, goes through a hill within the parish; an the Ouse viaduct, 100 feet high and upwards of ¼ of mile long, with 37 arches of 30 feet each in span, is about 1½ mile from the station. The parish is a meet for the Horsham hounds. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Chichester. Value, £515.* Patron, the Rev G.Bethune. The church is early English in part, and very good.
Balcombe through time
Balcombe is now part of Mid Sussex district. Click here for graphs and data of how Mid Sussex has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Balcombe itself, go to Units and Statistics.
GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Balcombe in Mid Sussex | Map and description, A Vision of Britain through Time.
URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/8224
Date accessed: 18th April 2024
Not where you were looking for?
Click here for more detailed advice on finding places within A Vision of Britain through Time, and maybe some references to other places called "Balcombe".
