Historians shake their heads firmly at the suggestion that Charles II rested at the manor house after his escape from Worcester and before embarking for the Continent from Shoreham. The tradition is a strong one, though, and one scribe cites a letter written to Sir William Burrell in 1780 relating how the fugitive King’s stalwart…

They like to make sure you stick on the fold’ in these parts because the inhabitants of the original community like to preserve their independence from the bustling and rapidly expanding market town which grew with the railway. Old Heathfield is separated from its younger but larger brother by Heathfield Park, which is surrounded by…

Pronounced Oaf-ham’, it is a village in miniature: a fine country house or two and no more than a handful of pretty flint cottages served by a handsome church, a pub and even a blacksmith’s forge where the toil of days gone by has given way to more artistic creations in metal. A sleepy place…