A welcome whatever the weather! The Anchor, Barcombe
The public house down this remote lane was originally built not to serve road travellers but the builders (navigators or navvies) and travellers on the Upper Ouse Navigation when it was developed c1790.

The Upper Ouse Navigation.

Canal scene with horse drawn barges at lock gates.
Dominic Andrews, Archaeological Artist.

Improvements on the river Ouse were set in motion by two acts of parliament of 1790 and 1791.Two boards of trustees were set up, one for the Lower Ouse south of Lewes, and one for the Upper Ouse north of Lewes. Although the Ouse north of Lewes had been navigable in part at an earlier date, by 1790 it was only navigable to Barcombe Mill. In 1787 William Jessop an engineer was commissioned by a group led by John Baker Holroyd, Lord Sheffield of Sheffield Park (not to be confused with the John Holroyd who later owned Barcombe Place) to provide a report on a navigation plan for the upper Ouse. The report was completed by 1788 and proposed a navigation from Lewes Bridge to Pilstye Bridge - just below the present Balcombe-Cuckfield Road. Jessop forsaw that the principal commodity for the new navigation would be chalk for manufacturing into lime or lime produced in kilns close to the quarries around Lewes; an important fertiliser for improving the poor Wealden soils. Certainly a special provision was made in the earliest plans to provide a cut to the chalk quarries at Hamsey.

The bill to allow a slightly modified version of Jessop's plan was enacted in 1790. The construction was slow and costly and the scheme was not completed until 1812. Many of the barges for the navigation were built in Lewes in the shipyard at Cliffe Cut. Most of the barge owners were based in Lewes. In the early years if the 18th century only two barges were recorded at Barcombe, James and Thomas Day and Thomas Adams owned two 16ft barges, the Lark and the Victory.

The enterprise never flourished and the navigation was already in a poor state when the London-Brighton railway line was completed in 1841 and it was the further development of the railway system that finally brought to an end the undertaking. In 1868 a last barge moored at the The Anchor Inn in Barcombe, which had been originally built in 1790 to accommodate bargees. Eventually, in the same year, boats were said to be no longer able to pass above Hamsey lock.

Some industries, the paper mills for example, were attracted by the new development but few survived in the longer term. The work provided by the construction of the navigation and the industries it attracted must have benefited the increasing population of Barcombe for ashort time. But, in summary, the navigation was 'a classic example of considerable sums of money wasted in a mania. No one made any money out of it and most of the subscribers must have regretted the day they parted with their money'.

Source
D F Gibbs and J H Farrant (1970) The Upper Ouse Navigation 1790-1868, Sussex Industrial History 1, 22-40.

Tithe Data

Anchor Public House
(The Anchor)

1841 Census

Tenement Analysis

Buildings

Archaeology

Old Maps

Further Information