Plaistow’s historic properties reveal the depth of this landscape. Plaistow Place, Quennells, Crouchland, Todhurst, Battlehurst, Rumbolds, Browning Farm and Greenfield Farm appear in maps, deeds and census returns. Plaistow Place became associated with the Lee Steere family and later tenants. Quennells and Crouchland preserve medieval and early-modern fabric, linking the village visible today with households that managed land, employed servants and participated in local religious and social life.
The Shillinglee estate exerted a particularly strong influence. Its farms, woods, brickworks, lodges, stables and great house supported gardeners, gamekeepers, coachmen, domestic servants, agricultural workers and estate craftsmen. The Turnour family, later Earls of Winterton, shaped employment and public life across the northern district, while the Ifold estate to the east contributed landowners, tenants and later the patronage that established Plaistow School.
A working village in the census
The censuses from 1841 to 1901 turn Plaistow’s buildings into inhabited places. The enumerators treated it as a recognised hamlet within Kirdford, although their boundaries changed from decade to decade. The strongest evidence therefore lies in the households rather than in direct comparison of population totals.
Agricultural labourers remained the largest occupational group. Farmers, shepherds and dairy workers were joined by sawyers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, carpenters, wheelwrights, bricklayers, grocers, bakers, publicans and domestic servants. In 1881 Alfred Smith of Short Green was recorded as a wheelwright and master carpenter employing other men. At Battlehurst, John Eade farmed about one hundred acres and employed ten men and five boys, demonstrating the labour required by a substantial holding.
Women appear most often as domestic servants, teachers, laundresses and shop workers, while much work in dairies, gardens, poultry yards and family businesses remained unrecorded. Children increasingly appeared as scholars, although older boys and girls still entered farm work or service at an early age. The returns also show movement between Plaistow, Kirdford, Loxwood, Alfold, Dunsfold, Chiddingfold and neighbouring market towns.
From the old chapel to Holy Trinity
By the middle of the nineteenth century the timber Chapel of St Thomas had reached the end of its long life. Joseph Butler designed a new sandstone church in 1853-54, and Holy Trinity opened in 1856. The church stood beside the road, pond and Sun Inn, continuing the local function of the medieval chapel while giving Plaistow a more prominent architectural centre. A clock was added for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.
Plaistow School followed in 1869, provided through John Napper of Ifold House. Children walked from farms, cottages and commons, and the school created a daily focus for a widely scattered population. Church, school, inn, shops and later the village hall transformed the crossroads into a compact institutional centre.
Religious life also included Nonconformity. Members of the Society of Dependants, commonly called the Cokelers, met at Quennells and Plaistow Place before a mission hall was built. Plaistow’s religious history therefore joined medieval Catholic worship, the Church of England and a locally important independent Christian movement.
Woodland craft became village industry
Woodland supplied timber, fuel and raw material for many generations. Sawyers converted trees into building timber; hoop makers split hazel; charcoal burners managed slow-burning stacks; broom makers and hurdle makers used coppice products; carpenters and wheelwrights transformed seasoned wood into buildings, carts and farm equipment.
By 1901 several Plaistow residents were recorded as walking-stick makers or turners. Charles Hunt was specifically described as a walking-stick turner. This census evidence shows that the craft existed before Leonard Lintott developed his factory in Fisher Street. The factory concentrated established skills into a larger enterprise, using machinery to produce walking sticks, crutches, Scout poles and shillelaghs. At its height it employed about seventy people and became one of Plaistow’s most distinctive businesses.
Other employment included brickmaking at Ashpark on the Shillinglee estate, shopkeeping, baking, blacksmithing and work connected with nearby orchards and the Kirdford Growers cooperative. Plaistow remained agricultural, yet its economy had become broader and more specialised.
Community life and the Winterton Hall
The Sun Inn stood at the heart of village hospitality, while the Bush and smaller licensed premises served other parts of the community. Friendly societies, church groups, cricket clubs and village gatherings brought together farmers, labourers, estate employees and tradespeople. An 1838 cricket match at Shillinglee included players from Plaistow, Kirdford, Petworth, Billingshurst and Wisborough Green, showing how sport connected the district across parish boundaries.
The Winterton family provided the Winterton Hall in 1908. It became a setting for meetings, dances, entertainments and public events, adding a secular gathering place to the church, school and inns. Football, cricket, the Women’s Institute and village performances gave Plaistow an increasingly organised social calendar. The green remained the natural setting for recreation and ceremony.
War, housing and an independent parish
During the Second World War most residents still lived and worked locally in farming, forestry, estates, shops and the stick factory. Men served in the armed forces, Home Guard and civil defence. Women worked on farms, joined the Women’s Land Army and supported voluntary organisations. Air-raid precautions, gas masks and emergency training entered daily village life, while local memory preserves the Lancaster bomber crash and the work of Plaistow’s Home Guard.
Lord and Lady Winterton made Shillinglee House available for Canadian troops. Their presence brought military vehicles and servicemen into the lanes, shops, halls and households of the district. Wartime fruit picking and packing also linked Plaistow with the orchards towards Kirdford.
After 1945 council housing and modern services enlarged the village and changed patterns of employment. Plaistow became a separate civil parish in 1951, giving formal recognition to a community whose identity had been built over many centuries. The medieval chapel has disappeared, yet its site within the old centre explains the arrangement of pond, roads and settlement. Holy Trinity, the school, Winterton Hall, historic houses, former workshops and the surrounding lanes continue to tell the story of a village shaped by worship, agriculture, estates, woodland and community life.
