Pease Pottage News

Weather News

There used to be two online sources for local weather news:

The Pease Pottage Weather website at http://www.nnae.co.uk/weather/, established in January 2011, provided trends, records, and current weather data for the village, but the site vanished several years ago.
The Staplefield Anorak website at http://www.staplefieldanorak.co.uk/ included continuously updated weather data as well as plenty of other useful information for local residents. When last checked in May 2023, the domain name existed but the website, sadly, did not.

Two other websites provide forecasts for the Pease Pottage area and are unlikely to vanish in the near future:

the Met Office’s weather forecast for Crawley at https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/forecast/gcpfg9hty
the BBC’s weather forecast for Crawley at https://www.bbc.com/weather/0/2652053.

2024: Woodgate Community Shop

In 2024, Pease Pottage’s long-awaited village shop was finally opened, on the new Woodgate estate.

September 2021: Woodgate Primary School

A modern, single-storey building with a street sign reading Stanford Brook Way

Woodgate Primary School was opened in 2021 on the new Woodgate housing estate.

March 2020: the Coronavirus Lockdown

In the year of our Lord 2020, it came to pass that a great pestilence befell the village of Pease Pottage.

Villagers awoke on Tuesday 24 March to find that the coronavirus lockdown had begun and that the roar of rush-hour traffic through Pease Pottage had vanished. Confused-looking people scratched their heads, unable to tell which day of the week it was, or even which decade or millennium. Weekdays were now as quiet as Sundays, and Sundays were now as quiet as the village had been before the M23 was opened in the 1970s.

Residents could breathe exhaust-fume-free air, and could hear the birds chirping in the few remaining trees. Pedestrians no longer had to wait five minutes if they wanted to cross Horsham Road. Parents and children could venture out in public for their daily permitted exercise without the risk of getting mangled by non-stop traffic. Cyclists could use the roads without having to defer to motorists. The car-bound non-resident commuters benefitted too, with many of them realising at last that their jobs were of limited social value.

Even the weather was nice. It was wonderful, apart from all the people dying.

2018 Onwards: Thakeham Homes’ Woodgate Estate

Work began late in 2018 to clear the land formerly occupied by the Pease Pottage Car Boot Sale for a new estate of around 600 houses. Construction of the first batch of houses began early in 2019. See the picture gallery for photos.

The road system around the service station was greatly expanded to cope with the extra traffic generated by 600 houses in an area with inadequate public transport. A plan of the roadworks with a timetable is available as a PDF download for anyone who is interested in how these things are done.

The roadworks were expected to be finished before the end of 2019, but were still incomplete when the coronavirus lockdown (see above) came into effect. The bridge near the Black Swan pub was neglected for weeks at a time, and the footpath along the bridge resembled a lumpy-tarmac’ed, deep-puddled, traffic-cone-infested obstacle course for months. Once it was eventually finished, though, the footpath was very nice.

2018-19: Village Hall / Community Centre

A single-storey brick building with large grey doors and very small windows

Construction of the long-awaited village hall on Finches Field took place throughout 2018. It was opened in June 2019, and later named after the long-serving local councillor, Andrew MacNaughton, a life-long resident of the village.

June 2018: Fire at Cottesmore Golf Club

The main building at Cottesmore Golf Club caught fire on Monday 11 June 2018. No injuries were reported, and the club was open for business soon afterwards, although the clubhouse remained out of action. For details and photographs, see the West Sussex County Times and the Crawley News .

February 2013: Pease Pottage Residents’ Association

The Pease Pottage Residents’ Association held its first Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 6 February at the Black Swan.

July 2012: Slaugham Archives Website

Barry Ray launched his Slaugham Archives website, which contains a large number of old photographs of Pease Pottage and the surrounding villages, as well as accounts of and by inhabitants past and present. It’s an essential source of information for anyone interested in the history of the area!

November 2011 Onwards: Housing Estate Applications

Thakeham Homes proposed to build an unspecified number of houses and shops on land near Woodhurst hospital. Nothing came of this proposal, although Thakeham Homes succeeded in getting permission for a very large housing estate on the site of the Pease Pottage Car Boot Sale. Work began in 2019 (see above).

Over the next few years, several other building companies applied for planning permission for housing estates in Pease Pottage. Not all of them succeeded, but some did. Houses now occupy the site of the Fairway Golf Driving Range, which had closed in 2011, and the site of The Grapes pub, as well as the area behind the Black Swan pub. Here are some of the houses where the driving range used to be (the one on the left doesn’t look very happy):

Four modern detached houses on an estate, with a sign reading: Coming soon, a development of three-, four-, and five-bedroom houses

January 2010: Winter Wonderland

snow-covered trees in Parish Lane, Pease Pottage

It snowed. For a few days, the traffic disappeared and villagers ventured out of their houses. Some people even started talking to each other. But things soon returned to normal.

N.B. The above photo has not been manipulated; the light which diffused through the heavy clouds really did show the landscape in monochrome. There are more photographs of Pease Pottage covered in snow on the Gallery page.

2008: Closing Time

The Grapes shut its doors for the last time:

An old white building with a grey tiled roof and a tall chimney, with a pub sign and a metal fence in front

The Grapes was demolished two years later, to make way for houses.

5 October 1837: Royal Visit

Queen Victoria passed through Pease Pottage on her way to Brighton, as reported by Henry Burstow in his Reminiscences of Horsham (1911), p. 41 :

We trudged on alone, through Roffey, hoping for a friendly waggoner to give us a lift, but none came along. At length we got to Peas Pottage, where we saw a large archway made of evergreens, with “VICTORIA REGINA” worked on it in various coloured dahlias; we were mightily impressed.