Queen Victoria visited Maresfield in 1845 whilst staying in Brighton. A fine avenue of oak trees was planted from Batts Farm to the “Manor House” to commemorate the visit and mark her approach route to “The Cross”.
The same year the Queen and Prince Albert stayed in the neighbouring parish at “Buxted Place” as guests of the Earl of Liverpool, the Rt. Hon. Charles Cecil Jenkinson. The Revd Canon Greville Cooke in his book A Chronicle of Buxted tells us the Queen wished to have some of the Buxted Park deer but the owner refused to break the rule that never would any of the herd be allowed to breed elsewhere. He however, compensated for what the Queen must have thought his obduracy by presenting to Her Majesty a deer in the form of venison!
The Diamond Jubilee Celebrations of March 1897 brought Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Victoria, Dowager Empress of Germany and mother of the Kaiser to Maresfield to plant an oak tree in the new recreation ground, given by Mr Hervy Pechell to mark the occasion.
The ceremony was conducted, in the absence of the Revd J.B.M. Butler, by the curate, the Revd J.L. Ward-Petley (author of Maresfield Old & New).
Mr Arthur Francis of Nutley produced some remarkably good photographs of the event.
planting a tree in Maresfield Recreation Ground
King George VI came to inspect the troops on the same ground in the Second World War prior to the European Landings but due to tight war-time security and restrictions no known photographic records are available.
In September 1945 Mrs Daisy F. Blair started a school at “Spring Cottage”, Budletts. She opened with four local children; Wendy Buchanan, David Mumford, Jeremy Grandage and Simon Turner who were between five and six years of age. She started the school as a means of support when left a widow with two daughters. Her only other experience of teaching had been in India when she became governess to Tony, the only son of Major and Mrs Lynch-Staunton who were one-time Maresfield residents (Mill House Farm and “Little Hindleap”, Maresfield Park). It was through them she met and married an Indian Army officer, James Maitland Blair who had, as a result of Army policy at that time, to resign his commission upon marriage.
This led to an adventurous eight years of pioneering a sheep station in the Australian bush before returning to England and eventually to farm at Park Farm, Maresfield in the mid 1930s.
The school closed about 1970 after having had the three eldest children of Lord and Lady Rupert Nevill, and Emma Soames, granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill, on the school roll.
In the early 1950s, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, after a weekend at “Uckfield House” as guest of Lord and Lady Rupert Nevill, instructed her chauffeur to flash the headlights on the Royal car and slow down as they passed “Spring Cottage” on her return to London in order that she could see where her godson, Guy, went to school and the children could wave to her. Guy was Page of Honour to Her Majesty from 1958 to 1961 and is now heir to the Marquess of Abergavenny of Eridge Park, Tunbridge Wells.
Extract from “Maresfield”, by Betty Turner , © 1991 Betty E Turner
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