Forest Row and Brambletye House

The village draws its name from its proximity to the Ashdown Forest, a royal hunting park first enclosed in the 13th century. From its origins as a small hamlet, Forest Row has grown, first with the establishment of a turnpike road in the 18th century; and later with the opening of the railway between East Grinstead and Tunbridge Wells in 1866; the line, which included an intermediate station at Forest Row, closed in 1967 as a result of the programme of closures put forward by East Grinstead resident and British Railways Board Chairman Richard Beeching.

THE ruins of Brambletye House – which stand on private land in Brambletye Lane in Forest Row – are the remains of a mansion built by in 1631 for the East Grinstead MP Sir Henry Compton in the reign on James 1.
It was bought from Sir Henry by Sir James Richards who was accused of treason and fled to Spain in 1683. The stately home subsequently fell into disrepair and today all that is left are three towers, each three storeys high, and unattached to each other.
The history of the mansion has been muddied over the years by its inclusion in a fictionalised novel about the Comptons by Horace Smith called Brambletye House – Cavaliers and Roundheads.