Wivelsfield

WIVELSFIELD is in the Eastern division of the county, Chailey union, Street hundred, Cuckfield county court district, Lewes rape, archdeaconry and rural deanery, and diocese of Chichester, 4 miles south-east from Cuckfield, &3frac12; south from Lindfield, 2 north from Burgess Hill station, and 2½ south from Hayward's Heath Station on the London, Brighton and South Coast main line. The church of St. John the Baptist is a small stone building in the Early Engligh style. The register dates from the year 1633. The living is a perpetual curacy, annual value £130, in the gift of Miss Jane Tanner, and held by the Rev. John Smith Foster, M.A. of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Here are two places of worship for Baptists and one for Independents. Miss Jane Tanner is lady of the manor; and W. Tanner, Esq., and Miss Jane Tanner are the chief landowners. The Sussex County Lunatic Asylum is situated in this parish, and occupies an elevated position on Hayward's Heath, about one mile south from the Hayward's Heath railway station. and near the centre of the county; it was commenced in 1857, and opened for the reception of patients on the 25th of July 1859: it is a commodious and well arranged building, and was erected at a cost of nearly £50,000, under the superintendence of H. Kendall, jn., architect; there is a neat chapel annexed, for the use of the officials and inmates: the number of patients at the present time is about 500. The area is 3,103 acres, and the population in 1861 was 709. [Kelly's Post Office Directory of Essex, Herts, Middlesex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex, 1867.]