The road past the Trevor Arms

There is a popular belief that the road passing the Trevor Arms originally went through the station yard and past what is now the back, but was then supposedly the front, of the pub before continuing up past the Long Row (Teddy Street) to Beddingham Toll Gate. This was repeated in the parish magazine as recently as July 2007 from the reminiscences of Roy Robinson, former agent for Glynde Estate. He wrote that “the Trevor Arms was constructed at the time the railway was made in 1846, but was built to face the railway as the road went through the station yard and across up past the Long Row [17-34 Trevor Gardens] unfortunately it was too late to change the design of the Trevor when the railway company had to construct a bridge over and thus change the road direction. That is why it appears the front of the Trevor Arms looks the wrong way”.

The illustration on the right is taken from the Beddingham tithe map of 1838 and shows that there were very few buildings south of Glynde Reach at that date. The old Beddingham windmill is shown on plot 195 and the building shown bottom right (plot 129) was the miller's house now called Mill House. The buildings by the junction at the old toll gate were the farm buildings for Balcombe's Farm, later to be used as cart sheds and stables for Balcombe's Pit. As well as on the tithe map this road can clearly be seen on a Glynde estate map of Beddingham in 1717, a number of railway maps, 1844-46, and a Firle Estate map of 1856. The road that branches to the left is the same road that now passes the Trevor Arms, goes past Beddingham Reading Room and then on to the A27 and which took a line similar to that it takes today.

The plan below of the site of the Trevor Arms was drawn on the original 21 year lease of part of a field called Pickfield, at an annual rent of £4 10s, from Henry Otway Trevor, then owner of the Glynde Estate, to John Harvey of the Cliffe, Lewes, spirit merchant, on the 25 June 1845 (ESROEast Sussex Records Office/GLY 1795). The road from Glynde to Beddingham is shown at the top of the drawing (in this case the south), the railway line at the bottom (north), the siding from the railway into Balcombe's pit, occupied by Rickman and Jenner, on the left (east) and the remaining part of Pickfield on the right (west), part of which would become the garden of the pub. This clearly demonstrates that the original lease intended that the original Trevor Arms building was to be sited between the road to the south and the railway to the north and that the road never passed to the north of the building. A subsequent lease of 1863 for the Trevor Arms, Beddingham, between Henry Bouverie William Brand, and Henry and William Harvey, at £2 5s a year, includes the same plan (ESROEast Sussex Records Office/GLY 1796).

The road heading south over the Middle Down toards the old Beddingham Tollgate was moved after the Trevor Arms had been built. It was re-aligned to the west to allow room for the expansion of Balcomb's Pit. When Teddy Street (17-34 Trevor Gardens) was built from 1879 to 1881 the houses were built to the west of that road, which became the twitten behind the new houses. Another new road was constructed in front of the terrace which is the current line today [2014].