East Grinstead

East Grinstead is a town in West Sussex, England, near the East Sussex, Surrey, and Kent borders, 27 miles (43 km) south of London, 21 miles (34 km) northeast of Brighton, and 38 miles (61 km) northeast of the county town of Chichester. Situated in the county’s southeast, the civil parish has an area of 2,443.45 hectares (6,037.9 acres). The population at the 2011 Census was 26,383.

Nearby towns include Crawley and Horley to the west, Tunbridge Wells to the east and Redhill and Reigate to the northwest. The town is contiguous with the village of Felbridge to the northwest. Until 1974, East Grinstead was in East Sussex before joining Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill as the Mid-Sussex district of West Sussex.

The town is on the Greenwich Meridian. It has many historic buildings, and the Weald and Ashdown Forest lie to the southeast.

The High Street contains one of England’s longest continuous runs of 14th-century timber-framed buildings. Other notable buildings in the town include Sackville College, the sandstone almshouse built in 1609, where John Mason Neale wrote the Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas”. The college has sweeping views towards Ashdown Forest. The adjacent St Swithun’s Church stands on the highest ground in the town and was rebuilt in the eighteenth century (the tower dating from 1789) to a perpendicular design by James Wyatt. The imposing structure dominates the surrounding countryside for many miles around. In the churchyard, the East Grinstead Martyrs are commemorated, and in the southeast corner is the grave of John Mason Neale.