Hampden House was originally built by a farmer in the village and then became the Glynde Vicarage.

The map of the manor of Glynde, 1717, show a house on the plot where Hampden House now stands. The map also shows this plot was owned by the Balcombe family who had been resident in the parish from at least 1560.

Thomas Balcombe died in 1691 and left, along with another piece of land, his messuageHouse or dwelling,
inc. outbuildings &
orchard, courtyard
or gardens (house) and half an ace of land to his widow Elizabeth. The property then passed to their son John and, after John’s death in 1716, to his son, another John, born in Glynde in 1693.

John Kidder of Glynde, tenant of the Great Farm, bought the plot from John Balcombe the younger in 1727. Kidder owned a number of properties and parcels of land in Glynde and Beddingham. Although initially resident at Trevor House, in 1730 he demolished the old timber-framed building that stood on the plot and erected the newly fashionable red-brick house that still stands today. The initials of John Kidder and his wife Elizabeth can just be seen carved in the stone above the door.

The Kidders did not live very long to enjoy their new home, Elizabeth dying in 1735 and her husband John, describing himself as a gentleman, died in 1744. John Kidder’s properties passed to his relation John Harris of London, cornfactor. Harris appears not to have lived here but rented the house out to ‘Governor Dean’. He advertised the property to be let in the Sussex Advertiser, 18 Aug 1756, using William Weller of Rambler Cottage as his agent.

Three years later all of Harris’ estates in Glynde and Beddingham, including this house and Rookery Cottages, were purchased by Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham, then owner of the Glynde Estate. On 5 February 1760 Trevor conveyed Kidder’s old house, barn, stable and piece of land with passage from the highway through the yard of a messuageHouse or dwelling,
inc. outbuildings &
orchard, courtyard
or gardens formerly Jeffreys, along with three acres of arable land behind the house and other parcels of land to the Governors of Queen Anne’s Bounty for the augmentation of a vicarage and glebe.

The Bounty was funded by the tax on the incomes of all Church of England clergy. The poverty of many clergy prompted Queen Anne to use that tax revenue to set up "the Governors of the Bounty of Queen Anne for the Augmentation of the Maintenance of Poor Clergy" in 1704. Governors applied funds selectively to improve poor clergy's income and, in time, to provide and repair parsonages for incumbents of small livings.

The first vicar to reside here was Thomas Davies, who moved here from the old vicarage (now Old Vicarage Cottages). When Davies became resident at the house he wrote a list of the fruit trees he planted in the gardens at Glynde Vicarage on the fly-leaf of the parish register.

Many letters from Thomas Davies to William Hodgson, steward of the Glynde Estate, resident at the Bishop of Durham’s house in Hanover Square, London, survive in the Glynde Place Archives. They include details about the rebuilding of Glynde church, improving the road through the village, deepening and straightening Glynde Reach and inoculating the village against smallpox.

The other vicar of note to live here was William de St Croix (1819-1877), vicar of Glynde from 1844 to 1877. As well as being secretary of the Sussex Archaeological Society, during which he restored the figure of the Long Man of Wilmington, de St Croix codified the first rules of the great Sussex game of stoolball in 1867.

In the 1960s the living at Glynde was combined with those of Beddingham and Firle with Max Godden, vicar of the three parishes residing at Glynde. On his retirement the vicarage house was bought back by the estate and has now become a private residence.

In 2014 the tennacy changed affording us the opportunity to see the full details of the property at that time as advertised by the letting agents Batcheller Monkhouse.