East Grinstead: the back story

About East Grinstead: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Brighton Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

East Grinstead is a medieval market town at the meeting point of four counties. Sackville College, its golden sandstone almshouse, was founded in 1609; John Mason Neale wrote the words of Good King Wenceslas there in 1853; and in the Second World War the town welcomed Sir Archibald McIndoe’s burned airmen, the Guinea Pigs.

Walk the High Street of East Grinstead and you pass five centuries of building: timber-framed Tudor and medieval houses, the golden sandstone of Sackville College and, outside it, a bronze surgeon looking down the street he made famous.

A medieval market town

East Grinstead stands about 20 minutes from Gatwick and an hour from both London and the coast. Its historic High Street is a conservation area, full of timber-framed Tudor and medieval buildings, with independent shops, bars and cafés; the town council replants its flower beds three times a year.

Check opening times and trains on the official sites before you travel.

Sackville College

Sackville College is a Jacobean almshouse founded by Robert Sackville in 1609, built of Sussex sandstone round a quadrangle and still an almshouse today. Its warden from 1846 to 1866 was John Mason Neale, who wrote the words of the carol Good King Wenceslas here in 1853. The college opens to visitors through the summer by guided tour.

St Swithun’s and the martyrs

There has been a church on the hilltop site of St Swithun’s since the eleventh century. By its entrance, three memorial stones remember Anne Tree, Thomas Dunngate and John Forman, Protestant martyrs burned at the stake in the High Street on 18 July 1556. Neale’s tomb is in the churchyard.

The town that does not stare

In the Second World War the New Zealand surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe (1900–1960) developed techniques at the Queen Victoria Hospital to rebuild the faces and hands of badly burned airmen. He saw that they were wounded in spirit too, and encouraged nurses and townspeople to welcome them into their homes; East Grinstead became known as “the town that does not stare”. His patients called themselves the Guinea Pigs, and the Guinea Pig Club, formed in 1941, met every year until 2007. A seven-foot bronze statue of McIndoe by Martin Jennings stands outside Sackville College, and East Grinstead Museum keeps a permanent exhibition, Rebuilding Bodies and Souls.

On the meridian

The Greenwich Meridian runs through the town, the only place where East and West Sussex meet Surrey and Kent. Stand astride the plaque on the terraces of the town council offices at East Court and you are in both hemispheres at once.

Our advice: walk the High Street from St Swithun’s to Sackville College, visit the museum on Cantelupe Road, and finish at East Court on the meridian.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with East Grinstead: the back story before you go.