A forge had originally stood on the site of what is now Pear Tree Cottage and part of Malthouse Cottages. It was demolished when the Grover family sold the property to John Willard in the 1730s and another forge was built on the plot where the current forge stands before 1740. The Glynde Estate purchased the forge and forge cottage from Thomas Balcombe and Morgan Davies in 1788.

Rev William De St Croix, in his parochial history of Glynde published in Sussex Archaeological Collections 20 in 1863, described the forge as a modern erection, and the annual statement of the Glynde Estate accounts of 1801 records that William Taylor was paying £4 a year rent for the house and smith’s shop and the estate paid Goldsmith’s bill for rebuilding the smith’s shop, £17 2s 2d and Streeton’s bill for the same, £8 12s. So the forge of 1740 had probably survived to that date. As no account has been found for a later forge being built between 1832 and 1863 it is almost certainly the forge of 1801 that De St Croix was referring to. This forge was over one hundred years old when it was photographed in a dilapidated state by Tom Pickard sometime between 1904 and 1907.

From 1767 to 1916 Glynde forge was worked by the Taylor family of blacksmiths.