About Westfield

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Westfield is in the Rother District of East Sussex and within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is one of the larger parishes in this area with a population of around 2,700. The Parish comprises Westfield village itself, the hamlet of Kent Street and part of the Hastings suburb of Baldslow. The village has a medieval church, a vineyard, a bee farm, a popular primary school, five shops in the village centre, a small business park and two pubs.

 It is six miles from the sea, four miles from the town of Hastings and about six miles from the towns of Battle and Rye. Woodland and farmland, typical of the Sussex High Weald landscape, surrounds the village.

 There is local employment at the Wheel Farm Business Park where small companies have created 75 jobs. The award-winning Carr-Taylor Vineyard is located on the slopes to the north of the village, and the village itself has a butcher’s, a village store, a news agents, hairdressers, beauty salon and two pubs – The Old Courthouse and The Plough. Baldslow has Bannatyne's Spa Hotel, fitness club and golf course, and the separately owned and managed Beauport Park Caravan Park, while Kent Street is home to the 1066 Plant Nursery and Sedlescombe Golf Club.

 A prominent sight when entering the village from the south is the church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, which has served the parishioners for over 900 years. Its many interesting features include extensive buttressing, a 12th-century porch and a 14th-century font with an elaborate 17th-century cover. Above the door to the tower there is carved a royal coat of arms with the list of vicars since 1250 set below.

 Westfield village existed in Saxon times and is listed as Westewelle in the Domesday Book, perhaps a scribal error, although there are indeed a large number of wells and springs marked on the 1875 map of the village. The village belonged to the Count of Eu and had close links with Battle Abbey in medieval times when the Battle monks farmed the lands adjacent to the church. As in so many Wealden villages, there was a thriving forge situated on the stream to the north of the village, making iron ware, weapons and cannon right up to the 1760s.

 At springtime, volunteers in the parish are working on an ongoing programme of bulb planting to bring spring colour to the area, and at Christmastime the village is well known for its truly remarkable display of lights, with householders raising money for the local St Michaels Hospice.