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Notes on the
Normandy
I
live very close to the Normandy, and cycle through its
funnel of parked cars more than once a day. The short
trip usually puts me into a state of mild gloom, which
is only lightened when I get within the benign shadow
of the Parish Church, when I begin to pedal more
happily through the lichen-encrusted gravestones.
Why the gloom? It’s quite simple, really. It's all to
do with the surrounding architecture - and the cars.
There are plenty of fine old buildings round and about
The Normandy, but not actually in it. The alms houses
to the south are as drab as can be, and the Masonic
Hall to the north, fronted by a featureless expanse of
car park, is pretty grim. There is, I suppose, some
comfort to be taken from the elegant row of small
modern houses along from the Hall, which look really
cosy, half protected by a mature stone wall, the old
boundary to the once undeveloped Vicarage garden – and
again the other houses on the other side of Denne Road
are a great improvement on the old bus station.
As a way of cheering oneself up it's quite fun to
think back, and try to conjure up what the place must
have been like in years gone by. As soon as he spirit
of Normandy past swims into focus things generally
start to get decidedly better.
I suppose if I was granted one wish it would be to do
a spot of time travelling. If the rules were strict
and I only had one choice I would probably go for the
Dark Ages, say 500 AD, that time of post-Roman
uncertainty, Saxon invasion and native resistance,
with much still unknown, and consequently much to be
found out. But if I had a second choice and I could
break the rules a bit I would not mind being dropped
in on the Normandy for a succession of historical
snapshots.
The dates I would pick, all anno domini, are firstly
950, just to see if there really was a Saxon church on
the site of St Mary’s before the Norman master
builders arrived, and to find out what was going on
among the clutch of wood and turf huts and patches of
grazing land that were probably round about,
stretching down to the Arun. That would be really
exciting. Secondly 1250, to see if I could catch
members of the de Braose family with their retinue,
all on sturdy horseback, making their way - if in
residence - from nearby Chesworth to service at the
spanking new church that Norman wealth and pride had
recently rebuilt. Thirdly 1550 - just to admire the
new grammar school, open for business for only a few
years, thanks to the generosity of a local man named
Richard Collyer. And lastly around 1840, to get a feel
for the hustle and bustle of Horsham folk and cottage
life in early Victorian times in that short stretch
between Back Lane South (as Denne Road was known then)
and St Mary’s Church.
The north-south way, the old main route out of Horsham
which we now know as Denne Road, is said to be of
great antiquity, and who knows whether there was a
linking track of sorts between the road and the area
south of today's Causeway, perhaps to reach an early
settlement in pre-church times, or whether it came
into use as a convenient way to get to the church. The
Normandy as a name is undoubtedly old (it appears as
an address in the Horsham burial register for 1586,
and later in 1608 as 'Normandry'), and it is said that
the way was named after a house called The Normandy
which stood nearest to the church on the south side,
and which in times gone by held ‘the Norman
Brotherhood’. This house, which is now long gone, was
later called The Priest’s House, and can be seen in
old prints. (And why we are on the subject of names,
why was the east end called Hell’s Corner in Henry
Burstow’s time? Was the church end once Heaven’s
Corner?).
Water for christenings was obtained from the Normandy
Well, which never failed even in the longest drought,
even though it was only about four feet deep, and
seemed to run in an open channel under The Priest’s
House. Incidentally in the late 1840s a fine carving
in bold relief, on an oak panel, was found
paint-encrusted in this house, and it ended up in the
private museum of John Honeywood. It was about a foot
and a half high, and the figure, probably of St John,
held a cross in one hand and a chalice in the other.
Where it is now?
One really attractive thought is the sense of
continuity that derives from the fact that for just
over 460 years there have been children tipping out of
school and scattering across the paths round and about
St Mary's, and generally causing a welcome sense of
noise and fun. There has, of course, been a school of
one sort or another on the site of the current St
Mary’s Primary School since 1541; firstly and mainly
the grammar school foundation of Richard Collyer, in
its various building phases, and from the end of the
nineteenth century other establishments. Many, many
generations of Horsham pupils, as well as others from
further away, have cut their teeth academically just
off the Normandy, and that is something the old place
should really be proud of.
Curious pupils at the time of Elizabeth 1 could have
whiled away the time, school usher permitting, by
watching the bell-founder at work in the Normandy. It
is known that Richard Eldridge operated a foundry
called The Belle House in 1592, on land rented from
the churchwardens at 10s per year. In 1947 Albery said
that about ninety of these Normandy bells were still
in Sussex churches, but it is not known where exactly
the foundry was. Anthony Windrum, in his Horsham, An
Historical Survey, notes that ‘as a bell-pit leaves a
lot of green-coloured sand around it, the site may yet
turn up in someone’s garden nearby’. From time to time
I peer over the wall into the almshouse gardens, but
so far without luck. Around 1623 the Eldridge family
moved their operations to Chertsey, where Horsham’s
own ‘great bell’ was later re-cast.
Let’s move ahead some 200 years or more, to when
Victoria was a young queen. In 1841 the census man
came knocking on the doors of the Normandy houses, in
what was part of the first detailed national survey of
its kind. The place must have been full of bustle
then, with young and old living cheek by jowl. There
were no less than 63 inhabitants, ranging from 85 year
old Henry Hopkins and his wife Hannah together with
Elizabeth Brown, both aged 70, and Edward and Zelpha
Aylward, 78 and 71 respectively, to 45 year old
William Redman, his wife and five children - the
youngest only two weeks old and as yet un-named.
There was a tailor, a hatter, a dressmaker, a sawyer,
a needlewoman, a ‘shoe builder’ (15 year old Jane
Eliot), a confectioner, no less than five cordwainers
(shoe makers: the earlier term was derived from
Cordova, a leading centre of Spanish leather which
shod the wealthy in the Middle Ages) and nine
labourers. There was no talk in those days about
‘service industries’ and the like; people actually got
on and made and did things.
Just a stone’s-throw up Back Lane South (or Coppice
Bridge Lane, as the census man called it), in the
first house north of Morth’s Gardens, we come across
the slightly bizarre establishment of Ann Melyard, who
for reasons best known to herself named all her six
children with christian names beginning with letter
‘A’, just like her own. Thus we have Ann junior, aged
12; Amos, 10; Alice, 8; Allen, 6; Amy, 3; and Agnes, 5
months. There is no sign of a husband - perhaps it was
all too much for him.
Nearby was a sadder story. In one of those side notes
to official documents which sometimes bring the bare
statistics to life, we learn that Catherine Tanner,
aged 30, who lived just down from Roberts Alley, had
two children, James and Catherine, aged two and one.
The census man noted: ‘The father Samuel Tanner was a
hair-cutter and is now a soldier having deserted his
family and enlisted’.
Just a year after the census the old Normandy
poorhouse was converted into an almshouse, for
‘fifteen aged women, who must be unmarried, or widows
of honest report, members of the Church of England,
and fifty years of age’, according to Dorothea Hurst
in her History and Antiquities of Horsham. Apparently
four ‘aged couples’ were also allowed to live in the
upstairs rooms, and everything was regulated by a
matron, to make sure everything was done by the book.
So the Normandy has seen much in its time, and there
is much, of course, that will never be known to us.
Given its location, the influence of church and school
was always going to be strong. It has always been a
kind of in-between place - just a connecting link
between a lane and a church, and I suppose we cannot
expect too much of it. But it has certainly had its
moments, and it's got plenty of associations with the
past. So with a pedigree like that I do wish that
today it was something more than just a car park.
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