1952 – 2022 Elizabeth II – Loxwood in the Windsor period

The Queen Takes Up Her Duties and the Village Resumes Peacetime Life, 1952

Elizabeth’s first months as Queen were occupied by mourning, meetings with ministers and the business that had to be conducted in her name. On 8 February she made the accession declaration before the Privy Council at St James’s Palace. Later in the year she moved into Buckingham Palace and attended the State Opening of Parliament on 4 November, reading the speech that set out the government’s programme. Churchill continued as prime minister. Britain was still recovering economically from war, while rationing, housing shortages and the Korean War affected government spending and household budgets.

Local authorities had already begun addressing the accommodation shortage. Petworth Rural District Council served Loxwood and other western Sussex villages and built houses for families who had spent years waiting for suitable homes. Some had remained in cramped cottages; others lived with parents or relatives after marriage. Construction required land, building materials and skilled tradesmen, all still in demand throughout the country. The council’s programme placed new housing within rural parishes, including small sites close to established village centres.

Loxwood’s older centre stood around Station Road and Guildford Road, with shops, cottages, the former chapel site and Church Cottage close together. Between those roads and Spy Lane was an open triangle of land edged by houses and fields. The council would soon use part of it for the first purpose-built estate in the village. This location was within walking distance of the Combination Stores, North Hall and the route towards the church and existing school, making it suitable for families who might still rely on buses or bicycles.

A New Headmaster and Plans for Nicholsfield, Spring 1953

Roland Edward Parkin became headmaster of Loxwood School in March 1953. He came from Doncaster, where he had been assistant headmaster at Dunsville County Primary School and had coached the town’s boys’ football team. He took charge of a school whose main building dated from 1878 and whose earlier extensions had accommodated generations of village children. Its rooms stood on Vicarage Hill above the River Lox, a familiar destination for pupils walking from farms, cottages and the houses rising north towards the pond.

A sketch published on 26 March 1953 showed Brewhurst Mill still working beside the River Lox. The artist recorded the miller’s house and outbuildings, an iron waterwheel and machinery then being driven by an engine. The millers used an iron waterwheel and engine-driven machinery in a building where earlier generations had worked with wooden and iron gearing. Photographs from 1956 identify Bert Kitchener as miller and show him with a Brewhurst Milling lorry, part of a business supplying customers beyond the old cart routes. His son later continued the milling work.

In the same spring, workmen and surveyors prepared the ground for new council houses. Petworth Rural District Council chose land inside the Station Road, Guildford Road and Spy Lane triangle and planned the first twenty dwellings towards the rear. It left ground nearer Station Road available for subsequent building. The council gave the estate the name Nicholsfield in July, a name that local research associates with Nicholas Nicoll, one of the men named in the 1404 petition for permission to build a chapel at Loxwood. The new street name recalled a surname already recorded among Loxwood’s medieval landholders. Council architects laid out short terraces and pairs of two-storey houses with tiled roofs, brick walls and gardens. Wide verges and a central open area provided space between the buildings and the road. For people leaving overcrowded rooms or older cottages, the plans offered homes built with piped services and a more regular internal arrangement. The council owned the properties, chose tenants from its housing list and remained responsible for maintenance.

Coronation Year, Building Shortages and a Wedding, 1953

On 2 June 1953 Elizabeth was crowned at Westminster Abbey. Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher conducted the service, which was televised and watched in Britain and abroad. Television was still an expensive novelty in many households, and families or neighbours often gathered around the sets that were available. Coronation decorations, parties and public events marked the beginning of a reign that many Britons expected to encompass several decades. Government programmes of housebuilding, education and welfare continued while the young Queen undertook her first ceremonial duties.

At Nicholsfield the practical obstacles were bricks and tradesmen. On 16 July the council’s building surveyor, G. A. Parker, reported that 6,000 facing bricks and 2,000 common bricks had reached the Loxwood site. Deliveries were arriving in relatively small consignments. By 22 October roofs had been completed and the external work was largely finished, though footpaths remained outstanding. A shortage of plasterers delayed work inside, and the council was still discussing slow progress in November. Its reports give a close account of the actual work that turned a village field into new homes. The council also had to choose which families should move in. Its points system took account of local residence, the number of people sharing a home, the size of a household and the bedrooms required. Officials considered whether existing council tenants occupying a house larger than they needed could exchange it for a smaller property, freeing a larger house for another family. During one discussion a councillor argued that applicants should have some choice of neighbours because friends might wish to live close to one another.

The village church recorded a family event on 23 October 1953, when Phyllis Lillian Clara Wells married a member of the Barnett family of Oakhurst Cottage, Plaistow. Susan Wells and Sheila Barnett were bridesmaids, and the reception took place at North Hall. The wedding brought together two neighbouring village families through the church built at the beginning of the century and the hall opened in George VI’s coronation year. The wedding joined households from two neighbouring parishes through the church and the village hall.

Forty Houses, New Garages and Village Families, 1954–1955

The first group of Nicholsfield houses was followed by another twenty in 1954. Petworth Rural District Council transferred a housing allocation intended for Plaistow while it continued seeking a suitable site there. Some local residents objected to the increased building at Loxwood, and nine protest letters reached the council, including representations connected with the British Legion and the Women’s Institute. Councillors considered the objections and proceeded with the additional scheme. Architects Godman and Kay of Horsham prepared the plans, and a tender advertisement in August invited builders to price twenty dwellings of different types. Houses meant more than walls and roofs. Families needed room for washing, heating, storage, children’s play and increasingly the bicycles, motorcycles and cars that brought people to work outside Loxwood. In August 1954 planning consent was given for eight lock-up garages at Nicholsfield, part of a wider district council programme that also served estates at Fittleworth, Plaistow and Sutton. The eight garages at Loxwood were estimated to cost £1,270. The following year the council was considering applications from tenants for a new hot-water service, treating the provision of dependable hot water as a separate improvement to rented accommodation.

One former resident later recalled living at No. 1 Nicholsfield with his parents Don and Margaret Mitchell and his younger brother Chris. His recollection names neighbouring families, among them the Cheesemans, Phillipses, Taylors, Fosters, Hooks, Whites, Gartons, Martins and Cavendishes. The houses had become family homes, with friends living only a few doors apart and children using the grass between terraces. The resident particularly remembered the annual November bonfire and fireworks near the large oak that stood in the central open ground.

The council’s programme also served Wisborough Green, Northchapel and Plaistow. These villages faced many of the same problems of older rented housing, the return of service personnel, young married couples and the demand for smaller homes. In Loxwood, the Nicholsfield roads established a planned residential area close to shops and North Hall, while many of the older village houses remained dispersed along the lanes towards Brewhurst, Spy Farm and the River Lox.

The Miller and the Last Years of Rural Passenger Buses, 1955–1956

The mill remained a working business while Nicholsfield’s new houses were being occupied. Grain arrived from farms and dealers, sacks had to be stored and moved, and flour or feed was dispatched to customers. Farmers were using tractors, powered threshing equipment and lorries in increasing numbers. Many agricultural workers were shifting towards mechanised work, machinery maintenance and commercial driving, and a single vehicle could replace several cart journeys.

Passenger transport was also changing. Fred Kilner had brought the Sunbeam bus and coach business to Loxwood in the 1930s. His fleet operated from a depot on Guildford Road and carried passengers towards Horsham and other destinations; wartime and immediate post-war passengers had depended heavily upon the service. Hants & Sussex bought the business in 1945, and during the mid-1950s the local No. 35 route gave way to the No. 49 service operated by Aldershot & District. The change followed rising costs and falling demand for some of the small private operators whose coaches had once filled village depots.

Car ownership remained uneven. Many residents still walked to the shops or school, cycled to work or used scheduled buses to reach larger towns. Older people needed a practical way to attend medical appointments, and youngsters travelled by public transport to secondary schools. Changes to the timetable affected how long passengers spent travelling and whether a return journey could be completed on the same day.

The Weald School, Suez and the Sale of Loxwood Farms, 1956–1957

The Weald School opened at Billingshurst in 1956 for pupils from a district extending beyond the village. It offered academic and practical subjects, including science, cookery, woodwork and gardening. Children who had begun their schooling in Loxwood or neighbouring parishes could now continue their education at a larger secondary school equipped for a wider age range. Education required regular transport, school meals and a timetable that connected rural homes with the school’s classrooms.

In the same year Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s government joined France and Israel in military action against Egypt following the nationalisation of the Suez Canal. The crisis exposed the limits on British power overseas and brought political pressure at home. Petrol rationing was introduced briefly in December 1956 and continued into the following year, drawing attention again to Britain’s dependence on imported fuel. Rural businesses using tractors, delivery lorries or buses had to work within the restrictions applying nationally.

An estate advertisement dated 29 March 1957 offered Loxwood Place and Pawlies together as attested dairy and arable farms. With the Tokens Farm smallholding the land covered about 360 acres and was offered as one purchase or in separate lots. The rebuilt Loxwood Place farmhouse was described with three reception rooms, three bedrooms, bathroom and mains water and electricity. The older moated farmhouse had been destroyed by fire in 1948, and the new building occupied a working farmyard beside the eighteenth-century granary. The sale showed what a modernised farming property could offer: land suitable for dairy cattle and crops, permanent domestic accommodation and connections to the village’s newer utilities. It also brought fields and buildings associated with the oldest part of Loxwood onto a commercial market increasingly shaped by mechanisation, dairy regulation and the cost of agricultural investment. The farms continued to use roads through the parish to reach milk buyers, merchants and suppliers.

Schoolboys from Doncaster, Royal Responsibilities and Changing Travel, 1958–1959

Elizabeth named her eldest son Charles Prince of Wales on 26 July 1958. He had become heir apparent when his mother succeeded in 1952, and the new title gave him a formal place in the royal family whose public duties were expanding. Television increasingly carried royal news into living rooms, while newspapers and newsreels continued to bring photographs of ceremonies and tours to readers across the country.

At Loxwood, Roland Parkin developed an educational link between his pupils and children in Doncaster, using letters to connect two very different communities. A party of Doncaster schoolchildren visited Loxwood in September 1958. Their trip brought Yorkshire pupils into a Sussex village where farms, woods and small shops stood within easy reach of the school. Loxwood children could exchange accounts of lessons, games and family life with classmates living close to a large northern town. In April 1959 Parkin organised a coach journey to Wembley for schoolchildren and parents to watch an England–Germany schoolboy football international. The party also went sightseeing in London. The following week Raymond Hempshall, England’s schoolboy goalkeeper and one of Parkin’s former Doncaster players, visited Loxwood School. A local teacher’s former sporting connections had brought national schoolboy football into the children’s ordinary timetable and given them a day in the capital.

Parkin left at Christmas 1959 to teach in Germany. The governors appointed Henry, known as Harry, Pepper, who had been deputy headmaster at Northgate Primary School in Crawley. Pepper had served during the Second World War, had lost an eye and wore the black eye patch remembered by former pupils. He took up the post in January 1960. Within four years he would be responsible for transferring the village school from its Victorian building to the new classrooms at Nicholsfield.

A New Headmaster, Dunsfold’s Hovering Aircraft and the 1961 Census, 1960–1961

Harry Pepper began work at the old Loxwood School in January 1960. The classrooms on Vicarage Hill had been enlarged during the Edwardian period, yet they remained attached to a nineteenth-century building above a road and river bridge that had to accommodate ever more vehicles. Children travelled from the newly occupied Nicholsfield houses as well as farms and cottages along Brewhurst Lane, Guildford Road and Spy Lane. The school continued to use registers, assemblies and lessons whose rhythms had been familiar to earlier generations, while the arrangements for a new building were being considered.

On 15 July 1960 the first Hawker P.1127 prototype arrived at Dunsfold airfield. Engineers were developing a jet aircraft able to rise vertically and then fly forward using a single engine with movable exhaust nozzles. The aircraft required special ground equipment because its hot jet blast could damage ordinary runway surfaces. A modified engine-running pen and a steel blast grid enabled test pilot Bill Bedford to undertake a tethered hover on 21 October and the first free hover on 19 November. The trials were conducted at an airfield built during the Second World War across land near the Dunsfold–Alfold boundary, within reach of workers living in the villages north of Loxwood. The testing programme used the skills of engineers, draughtsmen, fitters, aircrew and instrument specialists. Its workshops and runway supported aviation work of a kind far removed from milling beside the River Lox, yet both depended upon maintaining complex machinery. Aircraft components and test instruments arrived by modern freight services, while employees travelled by car or bus along roads that had first served farms and timber estates. The airfield became a major industrial employer within the same rural region as Loxwood.

The census of 23 April 1961 recorded households across Sussex and Surrey during a period of growing employment outside agriculture. At Cranleigh the parish population had risen above six thousand, and new estates appeared east of its older High Street. Billingshurst, with its railway and engineering works, also continued expanding. Loxwood remained a smaller village, but the housing at Nicholsfield had increased the number of families living close together. The contrast between these settlements was visible in the scale of new schools, roads and shops being built to serve them.

Larger Schools, New Churches and Transport Choices, 1961–1962

A growing population prompted public authorities to build premises better suited to specialised teaching and care. Ingfield Manor at Billingshurst began to be used in 1961 for the education of children with cerebral palsy. In 1962 the Roman Catholic parish opened St Gabriel’s Church at Billingshurst, replacing the smaller building in Lower Station Road. Both sites occupied land beyond the old High Street, reflecting the spread of public facilities across a settlement no longer confined to its traditional road junction. At Cranleigh, Glebelands School had opened in 1959 to serve secondary pupils, and new housing continued to spread around the eastern side of the parish. Some families who had previously used the railway for shopping or work were beginning to choose bus routes or private cars. The growth of garages, filling stations and parking places changed the commercial streets, while the old railway goods yards continued to serve freight customers.

Dunsfold engineers advanced from vertical hovering to conventional flight. The P.1127 first flew as a normal aircraft on 13 February 1962, and successive test flights explored the transition between jet-supported hovering and forward flight. The programme drew national attention to a practical British engineering achievement and led towards the Kestrel and later Harrier. Workers making and testing aircraft lived in a countryside whose other employers included schools, garages, nurseries, builders and farms.

At Loxwood the Victorian school still stood close to the bridge, and the village’s commercial centre was gathered around the stores and pond. The combination of a local primary school and larger secondary schools farther away meant that children of different ages made different daily journeys. A younger child could walk across Nicholsfield to classes, while older pupils travelled along roads towards Billingshurst or another secondary school according to their allocation.

Loxwood Bridge Is Widened and the Children Bury a Time Capsule, 1963

West Sussex highway works transformed the crossing of the River Lox in 1963. Loxwood Bridge carried the main road below the Onslow Arms, where earlier traffic had consisted of horses, carts and a succession of buses. Modern vehicles needed a wider carriageway and safer approaches. Contractors moved the side of the bridge next to the inn by approximately fifteen metres as part of the road alterations, excavating and rebuilding masonry and retaining structures while maintaining access along Vicarage Hill. Pupils at the school immediately uphill watched the workmen and machinery. Harry Pepper arranged for the children to prepare a time capsule recording their school and the village at the date of the improvements. It was sealed inside the new bridge wall. The capsule was a deliberate message from the schoolchildren of 1963 to people who might eventually open the masonry in a later century.

The work was carried out at a road crossing with several much older features. The Onslow Arms occupied a timber-framed former farmhouse above the river, and the toll house recalled the age when travellers paid to use the turnpike. The bed of the abandoned canal ran nearby, its former crossing having been filled after boats ceased regular navigation. Highway contractors worked between the old inn, former toll house and altered canal crossing while widening the road over the River Lox.

Traffic continued to grow during the 1960s as car prices, incomes and the availability of second-hand vehicles changed. The widened bridge served residents heading towards Rudgwick and Guildford, carriers taking goods to Billingshurst, and buses serving villages with scattered populations. Road engineering allowed more vehicles to pass through the centre and altered the space immediately beside the old inn.

The School Moves to Nicholsfield, 1964

Loxwood County Primary School opened on land facing Station Road at Nicholsfield in 1964. Harry Pepper led the transfer of pupils and staff from the Victorian building on Vicarage Hill. Classrooms, books, desks and equipment moved to a site that the rural district council had left open when it began housing construction in 1953. Families in the estate could now reach school without travelling down the hill to the River Lox, while children from outlying farms still walked or were brought along the village roads. The transfer ended eighty-six years of daily elementary teaching in the 1878 schoolhouse. That building had accommodated several generations, been extended in 1912, and served as the centre of school and Sunday-school activities. Its windows had looked down towards the bridge and the church opposite. The new school provided a different plan with rooms designed for modern teaching and play; the older premises awaited other uses.

Nicholsfield itself had become a settled neighbourhood. The first two groups of council houses were occupied, gardens had grown and the roads now served occupied family houses and growing gardens. Some adults who had moved in as young parents were now watching their children walk to the new school. The school, houses and open ground near the oak gave the former field a set of everyday uses that had been planned over little more than ten years.

During the same year Harold Wilson became prime minister after Labour won the October general election. His government would pursue policies involving education, technology and economic planning. For Loxwood, the most immediate educational change was already visible in the building on Station Road, while secondary schooling linked families with Billingshurst, Cranleigh and other neighbouring centres.

A Century of Railway Travel Ends, 1965

The Guildford–Horsham railway closed to regular passenger traffic in June 1965, almost one hundred years after its opening. The last scheduled public trains ran on Saturday 12 June; an enthusiasts’ special followed on Sunday 13 June, and the line closed formally after that weekend. Rudgwick, Cranleigh, Baynards and Slinfold lost the stations that had long served residents travelling from Loxwood, Alfold, Kirdford and the surrounding farms. The railway had changed rural trade from the 1860s onwards. Coal merchants, farmers, shopkeepers and builders sent or received goods at its stations, and young people used the trains for work, schooling or family visits. As the service ended, travellers arranged journeys by car or bus to stations on lines that remained open, including Billingshurst and Horsham. Railway staff left their jobs or moved elsewhere, and buildings and trackside land gradually acquired new uses.

Roads became more important for people travelling to Guildford, Horsham and London. Former railway passengers joined those already using cars and buses, while haulage businesses collected freight directly from farms and yards. The approach to Rudgwick station was still called Station Road at Loxwood, a name adopted in the early twentieth century to direct travellers towards trains. The name remained in use after passengers had stopped boarding at Rudgwick.

The railway’s physical route continued through the fields. Embankments, cuttings and bridges retained a line across the Weald that could be traced by foot, and the former Cranleigh station and goods-yard land was later taken into commercial development. The trackbed would eventually form part of the Downs Link route for walkers, cyclists and riders, bringing a new kind of traffic back to the corridor.

Shops, Aircraft and a Growing Billingshurst, 1966–1967

Billingshurst’s centre was rebuilt in stages as its population and number of cars increased. In 1966 buildings associated with the old Maltings and Gingers House were cleared to make way for the Jengers Mead shopping development. The new scheme included space for cars and modern shops behind the older High Street, where narrow plots, inns and long-established businesses still faced the former Roman road. Families from Loxwood could use the larger range of shops and services while retaining local stores for everyday purchases.

At Dunsfold the Hawker programme reached another stage. The Kestrel had first flown from the airfield in 1964, and the pre-production Harrier followed during the middle of the decade. Test pilots and ground engineers developed methods for controlling the aircraft in ordinary flight and during short or vertical take-off. These machines were destined for military service, but their manufacture provided skilled civilian jobs across the local area.

The official opening programme for the new Loxwood County Primary School was issued in 1967, three years after pupils had moved to Nicholsfield. West Sussex Record Office catalogues the programme among the school’s records. It marked the completion of the village’s move from the 1870s school on Vicarage Hill to the building serving children near the council estate. Schoolchildren continued to use the field and play space around Nicholsfield, while North Hall offered a separate venue for gatherings and clubs.

Industrial and commercial change was visible in private houses as well. In September 1966 Deanery Antiques announced that Desmond and Joan Smithers were trading at Linden House, the substantial Victorian residence on Guildford Road. They advertised oak, walnut and mahogany furniture, silver, china and glass, giving the telephone number Loxwood 223. A large house that had once accommodated an artist’s family and domestic servants was now used for a specialist business attracting customers interested in old furniture and decorative objects.

Brewhurst Stops Commercial Grinding, 1968

Brewhurst Mill ceased commercial corn grinding in May 1968. The mill had served farms beside the River Lox for centuries, and during the 1950s Bert Kitchener had worked there using engine-driven machinery when the waterwheel was idle. The end of regular grinding followed a period in which large mills, feed merchants and road transport increasingly supplied farmers and retailers across wider districts. The old building and its machinery remained beside the river, while the day-to-day movement of corn sacks and milling lorries ended.

The mill had undergone repairs, changes of ownership and technological alteration long before the final working year. The fire of 1899 had destroyed much of its upper machinery, and rebuilding gave the business a renewed life in the twentieth century. Waterwheels, gears, grinding stones and engines accumulated through successive working periods. When regular production stopped in 1968, the equipment became a historical record of the way millers had used water and mechanical power in the Weald.

Local agriculture continued around Brewhurst, Pawlies, Drungewick and the surrounding lanes. Dairy farms had to collect milk, feed cattle and maintain buildings, while arable holdings required tractors, harvesting equipment and access for lorries. Farmers still used the stone bridge built over the River Lox in 1672 along Brewhurst Lane. Near it the abandoned canal lock and filled road crossing occupied land that canal enthusiasts were beginning to regard as suitable for restoration.

A Prince of Wales, Church Cottage and the Age of Television, 1969

Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle on 1 July 1969. The ceremony was televised, bringing a royal event from Wales into homes across Britain. Earlier that year the television documentary *Royal Family* had shown the Queen, Prince Philip and their children engaged in domestic and official activities. The broadcasting brought viewers closer to people they had previously known mainly through formal public appearances and printed pictures.

The year also brought an important change to an old Loxwood house. Permission was obtained in 1969 to install a ground-floor bathroom at Church Cottage when mains water was connected to the property. The oak-framed building beside Station Road dated from the first years of the fifteenth century and had been converted over generations from a place of worship into domestic accommodation. The work reflected the practical need to fit modern plumbing into houses built centuries before piped water reached Loxwood.

Television and new technology altered national life at extraordinary speed. In March 1969 the Anglo-French supersonic airliner Concorde made its first flight from Toulouse. In July astronauts landed on the Moon, and images of the landing were broadcast to British audiences. People living in the Western Weald could watch these events within a few minutes of their occurrence, while local travel still involved narrow lanes and railway stations some distance from many homes.

North Hall, churches, schools, inns and the Combination Stores continued to hold meetings, services and trading alongside families’ growing use of television at home. The older forms of village society now operated alongside home television sets, household telephones, private cars and the expanding network of national broadcasting.

Decimal Money and the First Canal Volunteers, 1970–1971

In 1970 the Conservative government led by Edward Heath took office, and preparations continued for decimal currency. On 15 February 1971 Britain replaced the familiar twelve-pence shilling and twenty-shilling pound with a system of one hundred new pence to the pound. Banks, post offices and shops changed price labels and cash procedures, while householders learned to recognise the new coins. At the Loxwood Stores, other shops around the pond and counters in nearby villages, traders had to deal with customers still accustomed to reckoning in shillings and old pence.

At about the same time a group of people became determined to reopen sections of the abandoned Wey and Arun Canal. Public interest had grown after the publication of a modern history of the waterway in the 1960s, and a restoration society was organised around 1970. Volunteers met, examined old maps and approached landowners. Some began clearing vegetation and rubbish from the channel, while others investigated the legal and engineering problems created when bridges had been demolished or the canal bed filled in. The waterway had once joined the Wey Navigation near Guildford with the Arun system at Newbridge. At Loxwood it ran behind the Onslow Arms, crossed beneath what had been a canal bridge on the main road and continued towards Brewhurst Lock. Parts of the channel still held water; others were choked with trees, silt and reeds. The society’s early work brought a different set of people to the banks: engineers, walkers, boat enthusiasts and volunteers carrying tools visited the abandoned banks.

The first discussions made clear that reopening the whole twenty-three-mile line would be a long project. Land and water rights had changed after the nineteenth-century closure, road crossings had been altered and many locks were damaged. Volunteers cleared individual sections where the Trust had secured access and funds. The physical route that had once drawn commercial traffic through Loxwood began to attract attention as a public amenity and a piece of local engineering history.

Education, Europe and a Permanent Canal Trust, 1972–1973

The school-leaving age rose to sixteen in 1972, lengthening the period of compulsory education for children throughout England and Wales. Secondary schools such as the Weald at Billingshurst had to provide courses and facilities for pupils who would previously have left at fifteen. Parents in Loxwood considered secondary places, examinations and apprenticeships as their children progressed from the Nicholsfield primary school. More families owned cars, but school transport remained important to pupils living among dispersed farms.

On 1 January 1973 the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community alongside Denmark and Ireland. Agricultural policy, food imports and market rules became matters of particular interest to farmers and producers. The Common Agricultural Policy offered price and market support for certain products but also brought regulations and a system of decisions made across member countries. For dairy and arable farmers in western Sussex, the terms under which milk, cereals and other produce could be sold became increasingly connected with European legislation.

The Wey and Arun restoration society developed into the Wey & Arun Canal Trust in 1973. The Trust had to raise money, negotiate leases and purchases, apply for planning consent and enlist people able to work safely on banks, bridges and lock chambers. Its members faced a special difficulty at Loxwood, where the historic canal crossing of the main road had been replaced by a filled causeway. Reopening the channel would eventually require a completely new solution to the road crossing. The Trust also developed the Wey South route for walkers, following or approaching the old towpath wherever access was possible. Restoring the canal and opening a continuous pedestrian route were related but different undertakings: walkers could pass places where a boat had to stop at a filled cutting or ruined lock. The path helped bring visitors into the Western Weald before the largest engineering projects were attempted.

New Councils and Aircraft Work, 1974

Local government changed on 1 April 1974. Petworth Rural District Council, which had built the Nicholsfield houses, was abolished under the reorganisation of local government in England and Wales. Loxwood came under the newly formed Chichester District Council for district functions, while West Sussex County Council retained county responsibilities and Loxwood Parish Council continued to represent the village in its own affairs. Planning applications, housing administration and waste services were handled within the new district system. The change also affected neighbouring communities. Dunsfold and Alfold belonged to Surrey, where Waverley Borough Council became a principal local planning authority, while villages such as Kirdford, Plaistow and Wisborough Green came within Chichester District. Council staff in Chichester administered the district’s planning and services for Loxwood and neighbouring Sussex villages.

At Dunsfold on 21 August 1974 the prototype Hawker Siddeley Hawk advanced trainer took off for the first time. Test pilot Duncan Simpson flew the aircraft for fifty-three minutes, reaching approximately 20,000 feet. The project brought another generation of jet development to the airfield that had already produced work on the P.1127 and Harrier. The Hawk would enter RAF service in 1976, while aircraft manufacturing and engineering continued employing people across Surrey and western Sussex.

A smaller property transaction at Loxwood also showed how older houses were adapted to modern expectations. Little Pound Farm in Spy Lane was advertised for sale in December 1974 with about half an acre of garden. Its description included exposed beams, inglenook fireplaces, a bread oven and a well beneath the drawing-room floor. The house possessed features of a working rural household from an earlier age, while its sale was aimed at buyers seeking a family residence in the countryside.

Church Cottage and the End of the Dependant Stores’ Era, 1975

William James Wells of Church Cottage died on 17 February 1975. The Wells family had held the property since 1916, when it was acquired from the church authorities after the demolition of the old chapel. The building stood at the road junction beside the pond and had passed through several kinds of use since its construction at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Its continued occupation as a house required repairs and adaptation, including the modern bathroom authorised in 1969.

The Dependant Brethren also reached a turning point in the middle of the decade. Their Combination Stores, founded near the village pond during the nineteenth century and expanded through groceries, drapery, hardware, bakery and other departments, were sold during the mid-1970s. The shops had provided employment and income for a religious community associated with John Sirgood and the chapel in Spy Lane. The buildings continued as commercial premises, but the sale transferred the large cooperative undertaking into other hands. The business had once included agricultural properties, delivery vehicles and a garage as well as shop counters and a steam bakery. Its employees and customers extended far beyond the members of the congregation, and women had played prominent roles as clerks, managers and shop workers. The transfer of the stores altered a village institution that had combined religious fellowship, employment and trade for decades. The original shop range remained beside the road, still recognisable among the older houses near the pond.

The wider economy was difficult during these years. Inflation, industrial disputes and oil prices affected businesses, household budgets and transport costs throughout Britain. A village retailer had to price stock delivered from wholesalers; a farmer needed fuel, fertiliser and machinery; and residents travelling to work depended upon the cost of using a car or bus. These pressures existed alongside the more local change of ownership at the Combination Stores.

The Summer Drought and the Silver Jubilee, 1976–1977

The summer of 1976 brought exceptional heat and prolonged dry weather to much of Britain. Restrictions on water use were imposed in affected districts, and agriculture faced difficult conditions for grass growth, livestock watering and crop development. Farmers in the clay country of the Weald depended upon their water supplies, ponds and drainage systems in a season when evaporation and demand were unusually high. The government appointed a Minister for Drought during the emergency.

Elizabeth celebrated the Silver Jubilee of her accession in 1977. Public events took place across Britain and the Commonwealth, with the national celebrations concentrated in June. The Queen travelled to towns and cities and attended a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral. Parish and village organisations elsewhere arranged their own meals, decorations and commemorative activities according to local committees’ plans. Loxwood had North Hall for indoor celebrations, a school, church rooms and spaces for outdoor gatherings. Nicholsfield’s open grass had already become associated with community events, including the November bonfire remembered by an early resident. By the mid-1970s the families who had first moved into the new houses were joined by a generation of children and grandchildren. The Jubilee coincided with a time when housing established during the coronation year was approaching its twenty-fifth anniversary.

Clara Wells died in 1977, two years after William James Wells. Their family had been associated with Church Cottage during more than sixty years in which the road, neighbouring properties and services had changed. The house remained beside Station Road, while development elsewhere in the village continued to draw more people into shops and homes north of the old chapel site.

A Changing Rural Economy and a New Prime Minister, 1978–1979

During the late 1970s Britain’s economy was marked by high inflation and conflict over public and private sector wages. The winter of 1978–79 brought widespread strikes, interruptions to some services and a general election the following spring. Margaret Thatcher became prime minister on 4 May 1979, the first woman to hold the office in Britain. Her government began introducing policies intended to curb inflation, change trade union law and reduce direct state involvement in some industries.

For the Western Weald, employment increasingly linked a village residence with work in a larger town or industrial site. Residents could travel to Horsham, Guildford, Cranleigh or jobs around Dunsfold, while farmers continued to work land whose labour needs were changing. Shops in Billingshurst and Cranleigh offered a wider range of goods, and car ownership enabled some households to shop farther from home. Bus routes remained essential to people without vehicles.

The canal restoration volunteers continued clearing and repairing sections wherever landowners and local authorities permitted access. Their activities were sustained through subscriptions, working parties, donations and specialist knowledge. Some participants were retired engineers or boat owners; others were younger people who spent weekends cutting back vegetation or handling spoil. Each completed section made later work easier to plan, although the major road crossings still required considerable engineering and money.

The end of the decade also saw continued aircraft development at Dunsfold. The Sea Harrier programme and other military work required skilled labour and provided a link between the regional economy and the Royal Navy’s aircraft fleet. The airfield had already developed from its wartime construction into a specialised factory and test centre, employing people who travelled along the same roads used by farmers, schoolchildren and canal volunteers.

New Glass for St John the Baptist and the Last Movement of Brewhurst Machinery, 1980–1981

Between 1980 and 1982 five stained-glass windows were installed at St John the Baptist’s Church, Loxwood. Penelope Neave designed and made the glass, which was given by Elspeth Riley-Smith of Brewhurst in memory of her parents, Sir John and Lady Craik-Henderson, and her husband William Henry Douglas Riley-Smith. Four of the figures represent the Beatitudes. The work added twentieth-century coloured glass to a church that had carried furnishings from the earlier chapel beside the pond when the new building opened in 1901. The gift linked a local family with the parish church and the Brewhurst estate. The church already contained memorials to people killed in the two world wars and stained glass added in 1946, including images of St George and St Michael. The new windows brought a different form of craftsmanship into the same building. Glassmakers cut coloured pieces, painted or fired details and fitted leadwork to openings designed for an earlier period of church architecture.

At Brewhurst Mill commercial corn grinding had ended in 1968, but the equipment was operated from time to time afterwards. The machinery was last run in 1981 according to the mill’s planning and machinery records. Douglas Riley-Smith died at Brewhurst on 9 January that year. The house, farm and mill remained connected through the estate, although their practical uses had changed considerably from the period when a miller ground grain brought on horseback or in carts.

On 29 July 1981 the Prince of Wales married Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The ceremony attracted huge television audiences and public celebrations. Charles’s marriage was a national event during a period in which his mother had reigned for nearly thirty years. In Loxwood royal occasions entered homes through television and newspapers, while local churches and halls continued hosting the weddings, christenings and celebrations of the families who lived nearby.

Falklands War and Dunsfold Aircraft Workers, 1982

Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in April 1982, and Margaret Thatcher’s government sent a naval task force to the South Atlantic. British forces fought to recover the islands, with the campaign ending in June. The conflict placed the Royal Navy’s Sea Harrier and other aircraft at the centre of operations. Aircraft carriers, ships, ground troops and aircrew faced difficult conditions far from British bases. Dunsfold’s workforce had a direct industrial connection with the aircraft. Engineers and technicians were working on Harrier and Sea Harrier production, conversion and maintenance programmes. During the conflict staff undertook double shifts for urgent modifications and support. The airfield had become a specialist centre where the work of local civilian employees could influence aircraft operating thousands of miles away.

Harriers had been developed from the P.1127 that hovered at Dunsfold in 1960. The Sea Harrier first flew from the airfield in 1978 and entered Royal Navy service before the Falklands campaign. Its vertical and short take-off capability allowed operations from carrier decks. The urgency of the 1982 work followed directly from the engineering decisions and test programmes carried out at Dunsfold over more than twenty years.

The war also came into the lives of families through news broadcasts, photographs and accounts of casualties. Village war memorials already bore the names of local men killed in earlier conflicts, and churches held prayers during a campaign whose outcome was uncertain for weeks. National celebrations followed the return of the forces, while the detailed work of repairing and supporting aircraft continued at factories and military bases.

The Brewhurst Estate Is Divided and the Downs Link Opens, 1983–1984

The division of the Brewhurst estate in 1984 separated the mill from the farm after generations in which the house, agricultural buildings, fields and milling business had been held together. Buyers could acquire properties for different uses, including agriculture, residential occupation and the care of old industrial buildings. The division followed the end of commercial grinding and the death of Douglas Riley-Smith, whose family had strong connections with the area. A mill built for production raised questions that differed from those of an ordinary farmhouse. The wheel, stonework and transmission machinery required careful maintenance, and much of the internal fabric belonged to phases of rebuilding after earlier fires. Owners had to decide how to protect machinery whose economic function had ended. The mill remained a conspicuous building beside the River Lox, while nearby Brewhurst Bridge, the canal bed and the old lock occupied separate stretches of the lane.

In July 1984 the Downs Link opened as a route for walkers, cyclists and horse riders using the former railway corridor through Cranleigh and the countryside towards Shoreham. The railway had closed in 1965, and its route could now be followed for recreation. The new trail brought walkers through places formerly occupied by stations and rail traffic, with old embankments, bridges and cuttings providing the line.

Residents of Loxwood could reach parts of the Downs Link by travelling towards Rudgwick, Baynards or Cranleigh. Its creation belonged to a wider growth in countryside recreation, while the Wey & Arun Canal Trust was working towards restoring boat navigation and towpaths. One former transport corridor became a long-distance trail; another was being rebuilt for small boats. Both required practical decisions about access, bridges, vegetation and the maintenance of structures built for earlier forms of transport.

Historic Buildings Receive Protection, 1985

On 22 May 1985 several buildings in and around Loxwood were added to the statutory list for their architectural or historical interest. Brewhurst Mill was listed at Grade II, as was the Onslow Arms Inn on Guildford Road. Little Pound Farmhouse and Pound Cottage were separately added at Grade II. The buildings represented different activities: milling beside a river, hospitality on the old turnpike and domestic and agricultural occupation on Spy Lane. Listing meant that owners had to seek the appropriate consent for changes affecting the special character of a protected building. The historic fabric included walls, roofs, old timbers and internal features as well as the appearance of the building from the road. Brewhurst Mill’s weatherboarding and brickwork recorded its years as a working mill; Little Pound Farm retained inglenook fireplaces, an old bread oven and a well beneath the floor; the Onslow Arms stood at a crossing used by travellers for centuries.

Church Cottage had already been included in the statutory list in 1955. At the corner of Station Road its oak frame, crown-post roof and other early timberwork attracted the attention of historians and building specialists. Research into the building’s dates and its relationship with the demolished chapel continued during Elizabeth II’s reign. Owners repairing such old houses had to balance heating, sanitation and daily domestic use with the retention of physical features that could be examined by future generations.

The listing programme also drew attention to the large number of older properties across Wisborough Green, Rudgwick, Alfold and Kirdford. Timber-framed houses, churches, farm buildings and former workshops stood among twentieth-century homes. Development proposals increasingly required architects and councils to consider both the needs of current residents and the historical fabric of particular buildings.

The Great Storm Strikes Sussex and Surrey, October 1987

During the night of 15–16 October 1987 an exceptional storm crossed southern Britain. Winds exceeded ninety miles an hour in parts of the region, and a gust of 115 miles an hour was recorded at Shoreham on the Sussex coast. Large numbers of trees were uprooted or broken; falling branches and trunks blocked roads, struck buildings and brought down electricity and telephone lines. Eighteen people were killed in England during the storm. National estimates put the number of fallen trees at about fifteen million. The Western Weald stood within one of the areas most heavily affected. Oak, beech and other woodland trees grew beside roads, houses and farm boundaries, and the clay soils had been soaked by earlier rain. Landowners, highway workers and contractors faced fallen timber, damaged fences and blocked access routes. Electricity engineers had to restore services where trees had brought cables down. The extent of damage varied from site to site, and figures for damage at individual Loxwood properties would require examination of local storm-damage records.

The storm changed the appearance of woods across Sussex, Surrey and Kent. Large trees that had formed the edge of a road or sheltered a house could be lost in a few hours, while clearing and replanting took years. The Forestry Commission and other authorities organised advice on handling windblown timber and repairing damaged plantations. Sawyers, contractors and tree surgeons received additional work, and woodland owners had to consider the safety and value of trees left standing.

The disruption also exposed the dependence of rural households upon roads and power lines. A journey to Billingshurst or Guildford could be delayed by fallen trees, while shops needed electricity for refrigeration and lighting. Residents used local knowledge to find alternative routes around blocked lanes. The storm became one of the most widely remembered weather events of the reign in southern England.

Ebernoe Becomes a Parish and the Wider Weald Changes, 1988–1989

Ebernoe became a separate civil parish in 1988, following Plaistow’s separation from Kirdford in 1951. The large medieval parish of Kirdford had once included dispersed settlements whose farms and hamlets lay many miles apart. Separate parish councils allowed residents of those communities to deal with their own meetings and local interests while continuing to use neighbouring roads, schools and services.

Kirdford Growers continued operating from the fruit-growing district around Pound Common. The enterprise had developed out of orchard cooperation earlier in the century and came to include packing, marketing, retailing and a garden centre. Fruit cultivation brought seasonal work to the area and required transport to larger markets. The business gave Kirdford a different economic character from Loxwood’s former milling and Dependant stores, though both villages had long relied upon a mixture of farming and commerce.

At the end of the decade the collapse of communist governments in eastern Europe and the opening of the Berlin Wall dominated international news. Television carried scenes of people crossing between East and West Berlin in November 1989. In the same year Tim Berners-Lee proposed a system for sharing information through linked documents while working at CERN in Switzerland. The World Wide Web would become widely accessible during the 1990s, eventually changing how residents obtained historical records, shopped and communicated.

In Loxwood work on the canal still depended upon volunteers and the permissions required for individual sites. The canal’s earlier watercourse, the historic mill and the old transport routes gave the village several projects in which residents could take an active part. Technical knowledge was increasingly available from specialist engineering firms and volunteer networks organised beyond Sussex, while local people continued supplying labour and support.

Recession, New Community Buildings and the Monarchy, 1990–1992

Economic recession affected Britain at the beginning of the 1990s, with high interest rates, unemployment and problems for some homeowners and businesses. John Major became prime minister in November 1990 after Margaret Thatcher resigned. Households in rural districts faced many of the same questions as those in towns: the cost of a mortgage, the availability of work, and the expense of travelling to jobs beyond the home parish. Building contractors and estate agents operated in a market where plans for development could be delayed by financial conditions.

Billingshurst opened its Community and Conference Centre in 1991, providing a large modern venue for meetings, performances and local events. The older village hall continued in another use, while the new building served a settlement whose population had grown rapidly since the Second World War. In Loxwood, North Hall still stood at the junction of Guildford Road and Spy Lane, carrying forward the function for which it had been built as a coronation gift in 1937. Residents of the smaller village continued to rely upon the hall, school, church and local clubs for organised activities.

The royal family attracted unusually intense public attention during 1992. The marriages of three of the Queen’s children faced serious difficulties, and a fire broke out at Windsor Castle on 20 November, damaging state rooms and historic furnishings. Elizabeth referred to the year as an *annus horribilis* in a speech delivered four days later. The fire required a large programme of restoration, while questions about the funding of royal residences and the taxation of the Queen’s income were debated in public.

The end of the Cold War had changed the international setting of the monarchy, and a different economy was also developing at home. Small businesses began using computers more regularly for correspondence and accounts. Telephones were widespread, while early home computers and fax machines enabled messages to reach offices without passing through the post. The village post office and local shops remained part of daily routines, and their services now existed alongside these newer means of communication.

The Brewhurst Canal Bridge Is Rebuilt and the Lock Works Begin, 1993–1994

On 5 October 1993 Chichester District Council granted planning permission for the Wey & Arun Canal Trust to reinstate the road bridge carrying Brewhurst Lane over the canal. The older bridge had been demolished after navigation ended, and its crossing had become a filled causeway. The replacement design, prepared by architect Alan Johnson, provided an arched opening with a concrete and steel structure faced in Wealden stock brick. Road traffic could cross the lane above while a navigable channel passed beneath. The project required land access, foundations, temporary works and coordination with the local highway authority. Contractors had to open the filled crossing and construct a road bridge capable of carrying modern traffic. The arch restored an important connection between the stretch of canal east of the village and Brewhurst Lock, where the channel descended towards Newbridge. The appearance of the new bridge drew upon the traditional materials of the area while using twentieth-century engineering methods.

In August 1994 volunteers and contractors began the major restoration of Brewhurst Lock. The chamber had originally measured about sixty-eight feet long and twelve feet wide, with a fall of about eight feet. Much of the nineteenth-century masonry was missing or badly damaged. Replacing the stone with newly quarried blocks proved difficult and expensive, so the restoration team cast more than six hundred concrete blocks using particles from the original sandstone quarry source to help the new work resemble the old.

Canal work near Loxwood developed at a time when Britain and France opened the Channel Tunnel in May 1994. Rail traffic began passing beneath the English Channel on a route conceived for international passengers and freight, while volunteers in Sussex were restoring a short canal designed in the early nineteenth century for horse-drawn cargo boats. The scale differed greatly, but both works depended upon precise surveying, control of water and ground conditions, and the safe passage of transport through engineered structures.

The Canal Volunteers Finish Brewhurst Lock, 1995–1997

The fiftieth anniversary of victory in Europe had been marked across Britain in May 1995, with public commemorations remembering those who had served and died in the Second World War. At Loxwood St John the Baptist’s Church continued to keep the names of the village’s war dead, including Leslie William Cole and Albert William Howick, beneath the earlier names from the First World War. The churchyard and memorial were places where families could connect the national anniversary with particular people from their parish.

By the middle of the decade Brewhurst Lock was taking shape again. Volunteers repaired the chamber and fitted new gates, while an electric back-pumping system was installed to return water to the upper pound after boats passed through. The pump was important because repeated lock movements would otherwise release water down the canal faster than the upper channel could reliably replace it. The volunteers installed pumps and water-management equipment alongside the repaired brickwork and lock gates. In March 1997 the lock was operational. A section of canal once used for moving farm and industrial cargo had been brought back into working condition. Boats could use the restored chamber where access and connected stretches allowed, and walkers could observe the mechanisms from the towpath. The Trust had invested years of fundraising and practical work in an identifiable structure beside Brewhurst Lane.

The wider canal project continued beyond Brewhurst. The Trust still faced the obstruction at Loxwood High Street and the need to restore other locks, bridges and aqueducts along the route. Technical experience gained at Brewhurst would be used again, but the road crossing in the village required more extensive changes to the water levels than the rebuilding of a traditional arch or lock chamber.

Medieval Evidence Beneath Loxwood Place, 1996–1997

Plans to redevelop the former agricultural premises at Loxwood Place brought archaeologists to the old farmstead in the mid-1990s. Chichester District Council dealt with an application in 1996 for the removal of later farm buildings and development of the site. Because a remaining earthwork had been identified as part of a moat and the place had a long history of occupation, archaeological investigation was required before and during the works.

An evaluation in 1996 identified activity reaching back into the thirteenth century. Further excavation in 1997 opened seven trenches and recovered pottery, fragments of glazed roof tile, post-holes and waste from ironworking. Cooking vessels and finer jugs were represented, with much of the medieval pottery dated to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Iron slag indicated smelting and forging on the site or nearby. The excavations provided physical evidence for domestic occupation long before the Tudor-looking farmhouse destroyed by fire in 1948 had been recorded in photographs. The work also investigated the history of the moat. Earlier maps and accounts had described watercourses to the west and south of the house, with a possible continuation across the road. The trenches did not intersect the earthwork, leaving questions about its original extent. Archaeologists distinguished the pottery and structural traces they could date from the larger outline inferred from maps and earlier observations.

On 23 April 1996 the old timber-framed granary at Loxwood Place was listed Grade II. It stood above the yard on brick piers capped by circular stones, with weatherboarded walls and a half-hipped tiled roof. The granary had served the eighteenth-century farm and remained physically separate from the medieval deposits being examined below the neighbouring development. Its listing protected a building that had played a practical role in storing crops within a large agricultural holding.

Diana’s Death, Church Cottage and the End of the Century, 1997–1999

Diana, Princess of Wales, died following a road accident in Paris on 31 August 1997. Her death prompted public mourning in Britain and abroad, with flowers, messages and memorial gatherings. Elizabeth addressed the nation on television before the funeral on 6 September. People who had followed the royal wedding in 1981 now watched the funeral of the former Princess of Wales, while public debate continued over the monarchy’s relationship with the press and public expectations.

At Loxwood older buildings were still being adapted for domestic use. In 1998 an additional range was built to the south-east of Church Cottage, whose early oak frame stood beside Station Road. The alteration belonged to a long sequence of changes to the building, including the insertion of upper floors and chimney, its use as a house beside the old chapel, and the ground-floor bathroom approved in 1969. Later assessment of its age relied upon close examination of carpentry, timbers and documentary records.

Road traffic remained a major issue for the larger villages nearby. Billingshurst’s A29 bypass opened in 1999, directing much through traffic away from the High Street and the line of Roman Stane Street. Drivers from the wider district gained a different route around the settlement, while shoppers and residents in its centre experienced a change in the number and type of vehicles passing the shops and church. The road network served an economy increasingly organised around car travel, large retailers and journeys between villages and towns.

On 24 June 1999 British Aerospace announced that aircraft operations at Dunsfold would close. Engineers and production workers had developed Harrier and Hawk aircraft there over several decades, and the airfield’s runway and workshops had become one of the best-known industrial sites in the surrounding countryside. The announcement placed the future of its employees and buildings in question just as Britain approached the millennium.

The Millennium and the End of Two Local Industries, 2000

As 2000 began, Britain marked the millennium with public ceremonies, exhibitions and gatherings. In London the Millennium Dome opened at Greenwich, while towns and villages organised celebrations on a smaller scale. Elizabeth attended events that linked the new century with the end of the twentieth, during which she had already occupied the throne for almost forty-eight years. Many of the children who watched her coronation in 1953 were now grandparents.

Two established local businesses approached the end of long periods of work. British Aerospace completed its withdrawal from Dunsfold airfield, ending decades of aircraft development and production there. Workshops, hangars and runways remained available for new occupants, and former employees brought engineering knowledge to other employers or retirement. The airfield had passed through Canadian wartime use, Hawker, Hawker Siddeley and British Aerospace, carrying the work of military pilots and civilian engineers through several phases of British aviation. Kirdford Growers ceased trading in 2000. The enterprise had grown from cooperation among local fruit farmers in the 1920s into a business that graded, packed and marketed produce, later operating a garden centre and retail facilities. Its closure affected premises and activities that had made Kirdford an important centre of fruit production. Orchards and farmland continued to be worked under other arrangements, while older industrial and storage buildings faced changes of use.

In Loxwood the Combined Stores had already changed ownership, Brewhurst had ceased commercial grinding and many residents earned their living outside agriculture. The shops, school, hall, church and roads still served a rural parish in which historic houses stood near twentieth-century estates. The canal restoration gave local people another reason to travel towards the River Lox, as its cleared banks and rebuilt structures began attracting walkers and visitors.

Foot-and-Mouth Controls and a Church’s Centenary, 2001

In February 2001 foot-and-mouth disease was confirmed in Britain and spread through parts of the livestock industry. National and regional restrictions were imposed on the movement of susceptible animals, with stringent controls affecting farms, markets and access to some rural areas. The epidemic was severe, and government agencies dealt with infected premises and the disposal of animals. Farmers in counties beyond the main outbreak areas also had to follow the restrictions applying to animal transport and sales. The rules mattered to a district containing dairy and livestock farms around Loxwood, Wisborough Green, Plaistow and Kirdford. Farmers could receive official instructions concerning movement licences, vehicle cleaning and animal identification. The precise effect on each holding depended upon its livestock and the controls applicable at the time; the available Loxwood sources do not establish which individual farms had confirmed infections. Agricultural contractors and merchants working across several holdings had to pay close attention to the restrictions.

The year also marked a century since the present St John the Baptist’s Church opened on Vicarage Hill in August 1901. The building had been erected on land given from the Ifold estate, replacing the smaller brick chapel beside the village pond. It had received old oak seating and other fittings from its predecessor and acquired memorial glass, a churchyard and successive additions during the following decades. The church remained the setting for local baptisms, marriages, funerals and services of remembrance.

Church Cottage continued to stand beside the site of the earlier chapel, though the church itself had been demolished in 1903. Its oak frame and roof contained work of the early fifteenth century, and its relation to the medieval chapel was being investigated in increasing detail. The parish could trace worship from the licence of 1404 through several buildings to the church that completed its first century in 2001.

The Golden Jubilee, Drungewick Aqueduct and a New Use for Dunsfold, 2002

Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee in 2002 marked fifty years since her accession. Large events took place in London, including a concert at Buckingham Palace and a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral. The Queen travelled through parts of the country, and local councils, schools and voluntary groups organised commemorations. The royal family also suffered bereavements during the year: Princess Margaret died in February and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in March.

A major canal engineering project was completed at Drungewick in 2002. The Wey & Arun Canal Trust rebuilt the aqueduct carrying the canal across the River Lox, reinstating a structure that had originally cost about £600 during the canal’s construction. The modern replacement cost approximately £400,000 and demanded specialist design, fundraising and work on the watercourse beneath. Boats needed a secure channel above the river, while the river itself had to continue flowing under the new aqueduct. The canal had brought commercial boats through the district from 1816 until its nineteenth-century abandonment. The rebuilt aqueduct was part of a growing set of modern structures connecting isolated sections of restored navigation. It also provided a place where visitors could see two waters crossing at different levels, with the River Lox flowing beneath the canal. For the Trust, the achievement brought the more difficult High Street crossing at Loxwood into clearer focus.

Dunsfold airfield meanwhile acquired a new public identity. The BBC’s relaunched *Top Gear* motoring programme began using the former aviation site in 2002, incorporating a studio in an aircraft hangar and driving courses on the runways and perimeter tracks. A place long associated with the Harrier and Hawk became familiar to television audiences through cars and motoring tests. Businesses continued to use the airfield’s buildings and hardstanding as the former aviation manufacturing complex changed to a broader commercial estate.

New Uses for Old Buildings and the Canal Corridor, 2003–2005

The growing popularity of motoring and leisure encouraged more visitors to use roads towards the Weald. At Cranleigh a Sainsbury’s supermarket opened in Stocklund Square in 2004 on land associated with the former railway station and goods yard. The development served a settlement that had grown into one of the larger communities in southern Surrey. Shoppers from surrounding villages had a choice between local stores and supermarkets reached by car or bus.

A different change took place at Dunsfold School. The old school on Dunsfold Common closed in 2004 after serving children for more than a century and a half. Younger pupils transferred to other schools, including provision at Cranleigh. The buildings and land were left with questions about future use and the original charitable purpose for which part of the property had been given in the nineteenth century. Loxwood’s own school had already moved from Vicarage Hill in 1964, showing how local educational premises could change even while the need for primary schooling continued.

The canal Trust carried on rebuilding waterways between Loxwood and other points along the route. Restoration required dredging, removal of encroaching vegetation, repairs to towpaths and the rebuilding of locks and bridges. Some tasks were undertaken by working parties; others needed contractors and specialist equipment. The Trust’s boats and public events helped raise income for work that could only progress as funds and legal permissions were obtained.

The former Dunsfold airfield also began hosting Wings & Wheels events in 2005, presenting aircraft and historic vehicles to visitors. The runways provided space for displays, while the hangars and former engineering facilities supported commercial tenants. The events brought people from outside the district into a site whose existence had depended upon the emergency construction of a wartime airfield. Roads through Alfold and Dunsfold now carried visitors attending leisure events as well as people travelling to work.

Brewhurst Lock Is Altered for the New Road Crossing, 2005–2006

The Trust’s plan to reopen the canal beneath Loxwood High Street required more than the reinstatement of the nineteenth-century bridge. Modern road standards and the existing buildings made it impractical to raise the road sharply over a traditional hump-backed crossing. Engineers instead designed a scheme that lowered the level of the canal on the eastern side of the road, allowing boats to pass beneath a new bridge while the B2133 remained close to its established height.

During 2005 and 2006 the Onslow Pound between High Street and Brewhurst Lock was lowered by approximately 1.4 metres. Brewhurst Lock, which volunteers had restored in the 1990s, had to be reconstructed to accommodate the altered water level. Its fall was reduced from about eight feet to two feet, the chamber was lengthened from sixty-eight feet to seventy-two feet, and the masonry at the head was lowered. The changed dimensions meant that a chamber first restored to its earlier form was altered again after fewer than ten years. The works required digging out parts of the old canal bed and providing stable banks. Water control had to be maintained during construction and adjusted for the future operation of boats. New gates and lock mechanisms were installed, and the altered Brewhurst Lock reopened in November 2006. The larger scheme also included a new lock at the other side of High Street, where the canal would recover the difference in water level created by lowering the pound.

This engineering was closely connected to the roads serving Loxwood and Brewhurst. The Trust worked where old water and transport routes crossed each other: Brewhurst Lane, the River Lox and the B2133. Modern bridge construction had to serve cars and lorries as well as restoring a towpath and enough clearance for boats. The canal Trust was now undertaking a project on a scale far beyond the early volunteer clearance parties of the 1970s.

Financial Crisis and the High Street Construction Works, 2007–2008

The international financial crisis that developed during 2007 and 2008 affected banks, borrowing and public confidence in Britain. Northern Rock faced serious difficulties in 2007, and the government later supported major banks as financial markets deteriorated. Households saw changes in mortgages, savings and the availability of credit. Building projects and business investment were also affected by the cost and uncertainty of finance.

At Loxwood, canal construction required a different form of financing. The Wey & Arun Canal Trust relied upon donations, grants, fundraising and volunteer support, while contractors undertook the heavy works needed to pass beneath the main road. The scheme involved creating a modern highway bridge over an excavated canal channel, installing piled banks and completing a new lock near the village centre. The new bridge crossed the waterway at an angle, producing a covered passage approximately twenty-five yards long. Engineers provided space for a towpath beside the channel so that pedestrians could pass beneath the road as well as boats. The restricted height required horse riders using the bridleway to cross at road level, so the scheme included separate arrangements for different users of the route.

The works altered the space close to the Onslow Arms, where the old canal bridge had been removed long before any of the present residents were born. Contractors worked beside a listed inn and a busy road carrying local and through traffic. The project returned a physical crossing to the village and connected lengths of canal that had been separated by the filled highway causeway for about a century.

Boats Pass beneath Loxwood High Street, April–May 2009

In April 2009 a boat passed beneath the new Loxwood road bridge and entered the newly constructed Loxwood Lock. The navigation had been interrupted at this crossing since the canal’s nineteenth-century closure and the later removal of the bridge. A short journey under the B2133 required years of planning, earthworks, funding and the alteration of canal levels on both sides of the road.

The new lock was built to recover the difference in height between the lowered Onslow Pound and the level of the canal beyond it. Brewhurst Lock had already been changed to a smaller fall, and the section between the two locks had been excavated to provide adequate headroom. The project included a new winding area where boats could turn. Engineers installed bank piling and created a towpath through the passage beneath the highway. The Trust officially opened the restored crossing on 9 May 2009. Lord Sterling of Plaistow performed the opening ceremony, while members, volunteers and visitors attended an event marking the completion of work estimated at about £1.85 million. The road remained in use above the water, and people could now watch boats passing near the Onslow Arms. A village crossing first built for horses and barges in the early nineteenth century had been reconstructed for modern road vehicles and leisure boats.

The restored length formed part of a navigable canal route of approximately three miles around Loxwood. Trip boats could carry visitors through locks and past countryside once used for commercial transport. Boat crews had to operate gates and paddles, control speed and explain the engineering to passengers. The navigation offered a new activity for visitors while the Trust continued trying to reopen further sections north and south.

The finished work also created decisions about appearance and maintenance. Railings, parapets, road barriers and landscaping occupied a prominent place in the village, and residents discussed how the crossing should look. The lock and footbridge received recognition through engineering and community awards during the following years. The canal had become a working feature of the village again, with visitors arriving to see it and local people regularly crossing its towpath.

A Coalition Government and the Restored Loxwood Canal, 2010

The general election of May 2010 produced a House of Commons in which no party held an overall majority. David Cameron became prime minister at the head of a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition. The government faced the consequences of the financial crisis, pressure on public expenditure and debate over how local services should be financed. Councils throughout England considered budgets, housing needs and the costs of maintaining roads and public buildings.

In Loxwood the recently opened canal crossing had begun attracting visitors beyond the immediate village. Trip boats could travel through the locks, towpaths gave walkers a route beside the water, and the Onslow Arms stood close to a place where people could watch boats passing beneath the main road. Volunteers worked on bank repairs, vegetation and water control, supported by staff and specialist contractors when particular tasks demanded heavier equipment. The new crossing also altered how the River Lox valley was experienced on foot. From the road near the inn a visitor could reach the canal towpath and follow the reconstructed navigation towards Brewhurst, passing the locks, bridges and watercourses that the Trust had repaired. A walk along the canal passed working farmland and older houses, joining leisure access with an engineering scheme whose original construction belonged to George III’s reign.

The former railway corridor offered another route for walkers and cyclists. The Downs Link connected stretches of Surrey and Sussex countryside formerly used by trains, while the canal Trust sought to reconnect sections for boats. Both routes attracted people travelling into the Western Weald for recreation. Their maintenance required agreements with landowners and local authorities over footpaths, vegetation, signs and safe road crossings.

A Royal Wedding and the Queen Visits Ireland, 2011

Prince William, the elder son of Charles and Diana, married Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey on 29 April 2011. The service was televised internationally, and many communities held street parties or gatherings. The Queen attended as William’s grandmother and as head of the royal family, whose ceremonial occasions continued to attract attention across the Commonwealth.

In May Elizabeth undertook a state visit to the Republic of Ireland, the first by a reigning British monarch since the republic’s establishment. She visited sites associated with Irish history, addressed a state banquet and met representatives of the Irish government and public. The visit was part of a long effort by governments and communities in both countries to address the legacy of past conflict and strengthen present relations.

At home the Localism Act 2011 introduced a new framework for neighbourhood planning in England. Parish councils and local communities could prepare policies for the development of their own areas, subject to statutory examinations, referendums and the strategic plans of higher authorities. Loxwood, with its fields, historic buildings and established settlement around Station Road and Guildford Road, had many practical planning questions for residents to consider: the locations of additional housing, the safety of road junctions, access to shops and the protection of open countryside. The canal provided another subject for local planning decisions. Restored locks and towpaths were public attractions, but the Trust still sought permission for work on adjoining land and crossings. The experience of reopening Loxwood High Street had shown that even a short section could involve years of legal, financial and engineering work. Future restoration had to proceed alongside the interests of farmers, residents and road authorities.

The Diamond Jubilee, London Olympics and Loxwood Joust, 2012

In 2012 Elizabeth celebrated sixty years as Queen. National Diamond Jubilee events included a river pageant on the Thames and a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral. Across Britain flags, bunting and commemorative gatherings marked the anniversary, and special publications recalled the long reign that had begun in February 1952. The celebrations came only a year after the wedding of William and Catherine and focused attention again on several generations of the royal family.

London also hosted the Olympic and Paralympic Games during the summer. Thousands of athletes, spectators and volunteers came to the capital, while television carried events into homes throughout the country. Communities held their own sporting programmes and watched British and international competitors. The movement of spectators on trains and roads showed the capacity of transport systems that had developed since Elizabeth’s accession, when motorways were few and television ownership still limited.

Loxwood acquired a new annual attraction when the Loxwood Joust began in 2012. The event used land in the countryside near the village and presented historical entertainment based on medieval tournaments, costumes, displays and performances. Organisers connected the setting with the earliest documentary reference to Loxwood in the thirteenth century, when the name appeared in a conveyance of woodland. The festival brought visitors to fields that had long been worked as part of the Wealden countryside. The Joust required a different kind of preparation from the agricultural shows once held near the Onslow Arms. Temporary arenas, tents, catering, parking and access arrangements had to be provided for visitors. Performers wore period clothing and took part in programmes designed for families and people interested in medieval history. The event also brought business to accommodation, shops and hospitality premises in the wider area during the summer.

A Village Debates Its Future Housing, 2013–2014

Residents and Loxwood Parish Council were preparing a neighbourhood development plan under the new planning legislation. Consultations gathered opinions about village character, the amount and location of future housing, roads, green spaces and public services. The process required the council to work with Chichester District Council, publish documents and allow residents and interested parties to comment. The parish extended beyond the compact village centre. It included Alfold Bars to the north, Roundstreet Common to the south and lanes leading towards Brewhurst, Oakhurst, Pigbush, Skiff and Drungewick. Farms and wooded holdings separated many homes, and planning proposals could affect field boundaries, access to roads and the distance from new developments to the school and shops. Local residents sought to decide how additional houses could be accommodated while the village continued to function.

A formal draft plan was examined in 2014, and a parish referendum was held on 24 July. Legal challenges then required further attention to environmental procedures and the examination process. Chichester District Council considered the technical requirements of the plan and sought to make sure that a revised document could proceed lawfully. The work brought a detailed, modern planning process into a parish whose older development had been directed by landowners, farming needs and the gradual building of cottages along lanes.

In the same year Britain commemorated the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. Public institutions examined family documents, memorials and service records, while ceremonies were held nationally. The war memorial at Loxwood Church names men from the parish who died in the conflict, including members of families established in the village and its surrounding farms. Their names connected the centenary with individuals whose houses, workplaces and churches could still be located in local records.

The Parish Approves Its Neighbourhood Plan, 2015

A revised Loxwood Neighbourhood Plan went through examination and consultation before a referendum on 25 June 2015. Chichester District Council reported turnout of approximately 38.5 per cent, with about 98 per cent of votes cast in favour of using the plan. On 14 July the council formally made the plan part of the statutory development plan applying to Loxwood. The plan set out policies to be considered when planning applications were decided. It addressed the location and scale of development, the character of new buildings, open land and the services that a growing population would require. The Parish Council and local residents had supplied research and written responses, while the district authority completed the legal procedures. The vote gave residents a direct role in establishing development policies under national legislation.

The village had already experienced one large, planned housing development when Nicholsfield was built during the 1950s. The new plan dealt with proposals in a community that had expanded well beyond that early council estate. Many more people owned cars, older shops had changed hands, and the B2133 continued to carry vehicles through the historic centre. Housing plans also involved the capacity of roads, schools, drainage and public facilities.

On 9 September 2015 Elizabeth became the longest-reigning British monarch, passing Victoria’s record of sixty-three years and 216 days. She had seen the construction of Nicholsfield, the move of the school, the closure of the nearby railway, the disappearance of regular milling at Brewhurst and the rebuilding of the canal crossing. Those changes could be identified in named buildings and records without requiring any alteration to the old royal title used in church prayers and official documents.

The Queen Turns Ninety and the Canal Marks Two Centuries, 2016

Elizabeth celebrated her ninetieth birthday in April 2016. National ceremonies and public events followed during the spring and summer, and many communities held gatherings in honour of a monarch whose reign had reached its sixty-fourth year. Prince Philip continued accompanying the Queen at many duties, while younger members of the royal family undertook an increasing share of official engagements.

On 23 June the United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. The result produced political changes, including David Cameron’s resignation and Theresa May’s appointment as prime minister in July. The questions under debate included trade, migration and sovereignty. Farmers and businesses across rural Sussex followed the arguments because rules governing agricultural support, imports and exports had developed during more than forty years of membership of European institutions.

The Wey and Arun Junction Canal reached the bicentenary of its opening in 1816. The Trust organised events and continued working on the route beyond the restored Loxwood section. Near Dunsfold, a new road bridge at Compasses was formally opened on 2 October 2016. It replaced another obstruction created after the canal was abandoned and allowed the waterway to pass beneath a modern road crossing. The Compasses project took place north of the principal restored section at Loxwood, close to the canal’s summit and land associated with the former Dunsfold airfield. Contractors and volunteers worked within a landscape where the canal, twentieth-century roads and the airfield’s perimeter had all altered access. The new bridge provided access across the former navigation at Compasses, where volunteers continued repairing the canal beyond the reopened Loxwood section.

The Royal Household Changes and the Village School Continues, 2017

Prince Philip withdrew from regular public engagements in August 2017 after decades of service alongside the Queen. Elizabeth continued her constitutional duties, including meetings with ministers and State Openings of Parliament, while younger members of the royal family undertook more visits and ceremonial engagements. Official news now reached the public through websites and social media as well as television, radio and newspapers.

In Loxwood the school at Nicholsfield had been open for more than fifty years, and its official opening programme dated back to 1967. Generations of pupils had passed through the building on Station Road since Harry Pepper led the move from Vicarage Hill in 1964. The school served families living within and around the village, while older children travelled to secondary education elsewhere in the district. Its position beside Nicholsfield placed it close to the first group of council houses built during Elizabeth’s coronation year. The former schoolhouse opposite St John the Baptist’s Church had already spent more than fifty years in other use. It remained a familiar building beside Vicarage Hill and the bridge where its pupils had buried the 1963 time capsule. Other houses near the road retained their own connection with the twentieth-century changes: Linden House had been an antiques business, and the former Combination Stores provided smaller independent commercial units.

The pattern of village travel had also altered. Parents and commuters depended increasingly on private cars, the main road carried commercial vehicles, and pedestrians used footpaths near the canal and village centre. The railway once reached through Rudgwick remained closed, while the Downs Link offered a recreational route along sections of its former track. Loxwood’s public amenities continued to be organised around the church, school, shops, North Hall and canal.

Dunsfold Park Gains Planning Permission and Loxwood Reviews Its Plan, 2018

In March 2018 the Secretary of State granted planning permission for a substantial mixed-use development at Dunsfold Park, including approximately 1,800 homes, a school, community facilities and employment space. The proposal concerned land formerly used for military and civil aviation, where runways and aircraft workshops occupied a large site between Dunsfold and Alfold. The development would create a new residential area close to villages whose earlier growth had been based upon farms, church settlements and small groups of roadside houses. The airfield’s history was still visible in the long concrete runways, hangars, dispersal areas and engine test structures. Some dated from the Second World War, while others were added for the P.1127, Harrier and Hawk programmes. Planning for houses and shops required consideration of road access, employment land and the treatment of historically important aviation features. The authorised project also affected routes used by residents of Alfold and the villages farther south.

In Loxwood a separate question arose over the scale of future housing under the district’s changing policies. Chichester District Council published revised planning proposals during 2018, increasing the attention given to potential development across northern parishes. At a meeting of residents on 8 December, those attending agreed that Loxwood Parish Council should review its neighbourhood plan in the light of the proposed requirements. The decision began further work on allocations and policies established only three years earlier.

Both planning processes required detailed surveys and public consultation. Roads, drainage, landscape boundaries and the location of schools were as important to the future residents as the number of dwellings proposed. In Loxwood the question involved fields around a historic village with a medieval church site, older farms and the restored canal; at Dunsfold it concerned the re-use of an aviation estate with enormous areas of concrete and engineering buildings.

A Garden Village at Dunsfold and Further Canal Work, 2019

In June 2019 the government announced that Dunsfold Park had been selected for its Garden Village programme. The scheme had already received planning permission, and the designation placed it among proposed new settlements that were expected to combine housing with infrastructure, green space and local facilities. The plans affected a site that had first been transformed into an airfield in 1942 and had later become a centre of aircraft manufacture. The final year of regular Wings & Wheels events at the airfield was also 2019. Historic aircraft and vehicles had brought visitors to the runways since 2005. After the aircraft factories closed, filming, public events and business tenants had kept parts of the site active while decisions over development continued. The programme of public flying displays ended before the full Garden Village scheme had been constructed.

The Wey & Arun Canal Trust meanwhile worked on the more northerly reaches of the navigation. At Dunsfold Park it opened the Thriscutt Slipway in 2018, and in 2019 equipment was brought in for a volunteer dredging programme, including a dredger, tug and barges. Clearing the bed involved moving silt and maintaining water flow through stretches affected by earlier land use and drainage. The Trust had already shown at Loxwood that heavy works could be completed when specialist engineering was combined with sustained voluntary support.

Back at Loxwood, trip boats used the restored navigation and visitors followed the towpath near the Onslow Arms. The High Street crossing had now been open for a decade. The lock gates, pumping and water-management equipment needed regular attention, and towpaths required continued maintenance. Local shops and hospitality businesses operated in a village visited by walkers, boat passengers and people attending rural events.

Coronavirus Reaches Britain, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic reached Britain at the beginning of 2020, and the government introduced wide restrictions on movement, business activity and public gatherings. On 23 March the prime minister announced the first national lockdown in England. People were directed to remain at home except for specified purposes, while schools closed to most pupils and many shops, public houses and leisure venues had to suspend ordinary activities. Health services began managing large numbers of patients with Covid-19, and families adjusted to new rules concerning visits and contact.

Loxwood’s school, North Hall, churches, shops and other public venues fell under the rules applying across England. Teachers arranged learning for children studying at home while continuing provision for eligible pupils. Local traders dealt with rules on opening, distancing and the provision of essential goods. Residents with gardens and access to countryside paths could take permitted exercise, while families separated by the restrictions used telephone and internet calls to maintain contact. The measures also interrupted many forms of voluntary and leisure activity. Public events were cancelled or postponed, and organisations had to decide how to communicate with members and maintain premises during periods when meetings were restricted. The canal Trust’s maintenance and restoration projects were subject to the same national health requirements affecting other volunteer groups. Work could resume only when it could be organised within the applicable rules.

For residents who remembered the Second World War, the limits on ordinary movement were an unusual interruption to peacetime village life. People listened to government announcements, read public-health information and adjusted their shopping and medical appointments. The restrictions revealed how much daily business depended upon schools, care services, transport, volunteers and the ability to meet others in shared buildings.

Vaccination, Prince Philip’s Death and Recovery of Local Activities, 2021

A national programme of Covid-19 vaccination developed through 2021, following the first vaccinations at the end of 2020. Health services and volunteers organised appointments, clinics and transport for people who needed assistance. Restrictions were changed in stages as the vaccination programme progressed and infection rates varied. Shops, schools and community organisations had to follow a changing set of instructions concerning opening and gatherings.

Prince Philip died at Windsor Castle on 9 April 2021, aged ninety-nine. Because pandemic regulations still limited attendance and public gatherings, his funeral at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, on 17 April was held with a small congregation. Elizabeth sat alone in the chapel during the service. The funeral was televised, allowing people throughout Britain and the Commonwealth to watch the burial of the man who had accompanied her since their marriage in 1947.

Across the Western Weald, churches and community organisations were dealing with both bereavement and the reopening of public life. Residents could gradually resume meeting relatives, attending church services and using village halls when permitted. Some activities returned in altered form, with new arrangements for ventilation, cleaning and booking. Volunteers continued supporting neighbours who needed shopping, lifts or help with appointments. The pandemic also increased familiarity with electronic services. People used online ordering, video calls and websites for information about local events. Parish councils and community organisations could publish minutes and notices online, while printed notices and direct contact remained important for residents with limited access to computers. This mixture of old and new means of communication resembled earlier periods in the village’s history, when the telephone, postal service and railway each added another way to connect distant households.

The Platinum Jubilee and Loxwood’s Historical Trails, June 2022

Elizabeth celebrated seventy years on the throne in 2022. The Platinum Jubilee events in June included Trooping the Colour, a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral, a concert at Buckingham Palace and a pageant in London. Health difficulties limited the Queen’s participation, although she appeared with members of her family and greeted crowds at several public moments. Communities across Britain held parties, meals and commemorations to mark a reign longer than that of any earlier British monarch.

The Platinum Jubilee prompted a local history trails project that identified buildings from successive reigns and linked them to a walking route through Loxwood. The project organisers selected two routes and numbered the sites for a leaflet produced afterwards. One route began near Church Cottage and followed Station Road, Spy Lane and the old village centre; the other connected the pond, the road to the Onslow Arms, Brewhurst Mill and the disused canal corridor. The information came from deeds, building studies, parish records, historic photographs and the continuing research into Church Cottage and St John the Baptist’s chapel. The project later produced a leaflet mapping two routes through the village. It identified Church Cottage, the medieval chapel site, Loxwood Place, the Victorian Schoolhouse, Nicholsfield, the Combination Stores, the Onslow Arms, Brewhurst Mill and other properties. The trail began in the historic centre and followed roads used by villagers across many generations.

The leaflet’s illustrations included photographs of Station Road and the village pond, the former Georgian chapel and the roadside buildings by the Onslow Arms. Its map marked the old telephone exchange, Victorian Schoolhouse, Nicholsfield, Combination Stores, mill, bridges and locks. The plan also pointed walkers towards properties farther out, including Pawlies, Songhurst, Drungewick Manor and old woodland holdings. These places formed the practical stages of the trails, which had been inspired by the Jubilee.

September 2022: Elizabeth Dies and Charles III Becomes King

Elizabeth died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland on 8 September 2022, aged ninety-six. She had been Queen for more than seventy years. Her eldest son Charles succeeded immediately as Charles III, and the Accession Council proclaimed him at St James’s Palace on 10 September. Government, Parliament, the armed forces and the established churches made the changes required by the accession.

The Queen’s coffin travelled from Scotland to London, where members of the public were able to pay their respects. A state funeral took place at Westminster Abbey on 19 September, followed by committal at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Services and commemorations were arranged across Britain, and official flags were flown at half-mast during the mourning period.

On 9 September Loxwood Parish Council published a notice expressing its sadness at the Queen’s death. It directed residents to the Royal Household’s online book of condolence, explained that details of a possible local book would follow and advised that the county proclamation of Charles III would take place at County Hall in Chichester. The council’s statement was issued a day after Elizabeth’s death and before the funeral, while the Church of England arranged prayers and services of remembrance across the country.