By the early twentieth century Plaistow had a church, school, hall, shops, inns and other village businesses. Civil administration still followed the Kirdford boundary. Official records described Plaistow as the Plaistow Ward of Kirdford Parish, and elected representatives from the ward sat on Kirdford Parish Council.
Church boundaries followed their own line. Holy Trinity remained within the Church of England parish of Kirdford with Plaistow even after civil government later separated the two villages. The civil parish and the ecclesiastical parish therefore ceased to cover exactly the same administrative area.
Elected parish government
The modern system of elected parish councils came from the Local Government Act 1894. The Act transferred rural parish government away from the older vestry system and required parish councillors to be elected by the parochial electors. Kirdford Parish Council became the elected civil authority for the old parish, including its Plaistow Ward.
The council dealt with local matters at parish level while Petworth Rural District Council handled larger services such as housing and sanitation. County functions belonged to West Sussex County Council. This three-level arrangement was still operating when the population around Ifold began to change rapidly in the twentieth century.
A new Ifold grows across old boundaries
Until the 1930s Ifold was dominated by the country estate. After the failure of the Montagu Scott enterprises, H. W. Brake marketed former estate land as freehold building plots and smallholdings. The Drive, The Ride and Chalk Road retained the lines of the old estate roads while new owners built houses, sheds and weekend bungalows among the woods and former parkland.
The Second World War accelerated permanent occupation. Families who had bought plots for weekends remained at Ifold, evacuees occupied huts and garages, and new homes continued to appear after 1945. The earlier articles on wartime Ifold, private roads and mains services follow that development in detail.
The expanding Ifold Wood Estate exposed a problem inherited from the old parish map. The residential settlement crossed the civil boundary. Part lay in Plaistow and part in Loxwood, although residents used the same private roads, shops, meeting places and residents’ organisations.
Post-war pressure in the Plaistow Ward
Post-war housing and services were also changing Plaistow. In August 1950 Petworth Rural District Council considered a revised sewerage scheme prepared by its senior sanitary engineer, A. W. Green. He reduced the estimated cost from about £23,000 to £11,000 before the scheme went to the Ministry of Health. The same council meeting considered bus services through Northchapel and Plaistow.
Kirdford Parish Council had already decided that the northern ward should have its own civil administration. In 1950 it submitted formal representations to West Sussex County Council asking that ‘the Plaistow Ward of Kirdford Parish’ should be separated from Kirdford and constituted as a new parish. Petworth Rural District Council recorded that it had no objection to the proposal.
The Winterton Hall inquiry
The application proceeded under sections 141 and 142 of the Local Government Act 1933. West Sussex County Council first had to decide that there was a prima facie case for changing the parish. It accepted the proposal and appointed a special committee.
T. C. Hayward, Clerk of the County Council, issued the public notice from County Hall on 4 September 1950. The inquiry opened at Winterton Hall at 11 a.m. on Monday 25 September. The notice invited interested inhabitants and authorities to attend and be heard.
Winterton Hall stood beside Cox’s Pond in the centre of Plaistow, close to Holy Trinity, the school, the Sun Inn and the village green. It had been erected in 1908 in memory of Edward Turnour, fifth Earl Winterton of Shillinglee, by his widow Georgiana and their son Edward Turnour, sixth Earl Winterton.
After the inquiry West Sussex County Council made the County of West Sussex (Parishes of Kirdford and Plaistow) Confirmation Order, 1951. Plaistow became a separate civil parish on 1 April 1951.
Plaistow Parish Council begins work
The new parish now had its own elected council rather than representatives sitting on Kirdford Parish Council. A. E. Curtis was serving as chairman by June 1951. The council could raise a parish rate, appoint committees and manage property held for local purposes.
Its first year brought two important properties into parish hands. On Saturday 2 June 1951 Edward Turnour, sixth Earl Winterton, presented the key of Winterton Hall to A. E. Curtis. A conveyance dated 9 June transferred the hall to Plaistow Parish Council for one pound.
George Price Webley Hope, a retired Royal Navy admiral living at Common House, also gave the Plaistow Recreation Area to the Parish Council in 1951. The trust reserved the ground for recreation, physical and mental training and activities for the inhabitants. The lower green and later children’s playground developed from that gift.
The council appointed committees for Winterton Hall, the recreation ground, roads and local services. Meetings at Winterton Hall dealt with repairs, electricity charges, water supply and parish land.
An elected council in action
The first years produced the ordinary disputes and decisions of village government. In January 1956 a county contractor severely cut the old elm on Plaistow Green after the council had requested removal of a dead limb. Mrs D. Caunt and Mrs Yates brought a petition signed by 141 residents to a special meeting at Winterton Hall. A. E. Curtis told the meeting that the council had expected one dangerous branch to be removed.
The 1958 triennial parish election drew votes from 52 per cent of the electorate. Nine councillors were elected. At the annual meeting on 29 May, A. E. Curtis was returned as chairman and B. H. Whitaker as vice-chairman. Committees covered building inspection, Winterton Hall, roads and safety, while the annual report also dealt with rural roads and the proposed Northchapel water link.
Ifold returns the boundary question to the council
By the end of the 1950s Ifold was a permanent and still growing settlement. The parish line through the former estate now divided people living within the same residential area between Loxwood and Plaistow. Representations were made in 1959 asking West Sussex County Council to alter the boundary so that the whole Ifold Wood Estate would lie in Plaistow.
The county council again used the procedure followed in 1950. T. C. Hayward issued a public notice on 24 October 1959 and a special committee arranged a local inquiry.
This time the hearing took place inside Ifold. It opened at Kelsey Hall at 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday 3 November 1959. Kelsey had grown from the post-war residents’ meeting place in Chalk Road and was already used by the Ifold organisations described in the article on the hall and village social life.
The 1959 inquiry brought the administrative map into the same room where residents had been organising roads, services and community events. The proposal before the county council was specific: the whole Ifold Wood Estate should lie within Plaistow parish.
Plaistow and Ifold
The council now uses the name Plaistow and Ifold Parish Council. The parish comprises four settlements: Plaistow, Ifold, Durfold Wood and Shillinglee. Ifold, once the name of a manor and country estate within Kirdford, is now the largest residential settlement in the parish.
Winterton Hall and Kelsey Hall remain the two principal public meeting places associated with the council. Winterton Hall hosted the inquiry that created Plaistow civil parish in September 1950; Kelsey Hall hosted the inquiry into the Ifold boundary in November 1959.
