1719: June 4th. “A cricket match in the
Sandfields with Henfield”
1721: May 18th.”Will and Terry went to a
cricket match in Henfield”
By 1764, Henfield Common is referenced
in the Sussex Weekly Advertiser as the
location for what is generally accepted as
being Arundel’s first match, against East
Sussex.
I know that I am a bit biased and not a
huge fan of the game but it’s nice to see
cricket still being played on the same
spot after nearly 300 years.
Henfield also claims to have the oldest
Scout group in the country (1st Henfield),
dating from 1907. This is hotly contested
by a number of other troops and,
due to poor record keeping when the
Scouting Movement started, The Scout
Association does not acknowledge any
single troop as being the first. But we all
know it was Henfield, don’t we?
In 1913 Asquith’s Liberal government
introduced the Prisoners (Temporary
Discharge for Ill Health) Act, which
became known as the Cat and Mouse
Act. The Act was introduced to tackle
hunger strikes by suffragettes who, after
it was passed, were no longer force-fed
during their time in prison, which had
previously been common practice to
combat the hunger strikes. Rather, those
on hunger strike were kept in prison
until they became extremely weak, at
which point they would be released to
recover. This allowed the government
to claim that any harm (or even death)
which resulted from the starvation was
entirely the fault of the suffragette. After
this, any wrongdoing on the part of the
suffragette would see them put straight
back in prison, the nickname of the Act
came about because of a cat’s habit of
playing with its prey (a mouse) before
finishing it off.
Local suffragette Elizabeth Robins used
her 15th century farmhouse near Henfield
that she shared with Octavia Wilberforce,
as a retreat fo r suffragettes recovering
from hunger strike. Robins was a wealthy
heiress who became an actress and
after giving up the stage she travelled to
America to rescue her brother, who had
been caught up in the Gold Rush of the
1890s. When she returned she wrote a
book about her travels and in 1927 she
opened her house again as a rest home
for overworked professional women and
many famous people, including writer
and actress Dame Sybil Thorndyke,
stayed there.
In 1966 Dr Richard Beeching, the then
chairman of British Rail published his
now infamous report; The Reshaping of
British Railways in which he identified
2,363 stations and 5,000 miles of railway
line for closure, This drastic cutting
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