You are here:
Ifield
Ifield maps
Historic maps of Ifield and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Ifield maps
Ifield area books
Displaying 1 of 19 books about Ifield and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Ifield
Displaying a selection of personal
memories of Ifield.
Add your memory of Ifield
or of a photo of Ifield.
Strathmore
My parents bought Strathmore which was a large house with 4 1/2 acres of garden just opposite the village shop on the road to Charlwood. We lived there as a family until about 1965, Peter Butterworth was a neighbour. Both my sisters Anne & Carolyn were married in Ifield Church. Friends who also lived in the village were John Reynolds and George Dutton. The Laker family were our gardeners. Strathmore is now a development of 54 Georgian style houses.
West Sussex memories
My Parents Were Married Here
My mum and dad were married here and I was christened in this lovely old church. My parents were both from old Crawley families.
Gamekeeper
My great grandad worked as a gamekeeper on the Tilgate estate. He moved with his family from Suffolk to Crawley in the 1880s.
I have many happy memories of visiting my grandparents at Tilgate estate. They lived in the house next to the walled garden. I used to help pick the peaches and strawberries that my grandad grew. They were sent to London to be sold.
The estate was beautiful in those days. It is now a public park...
Wolseley Cars
The car in the photograph is a Wolseley. I am the Secretary of the Wolseley Register and recognise the car. The interesting thing is that a similar car exists in Hertfordshire and that also has the wicker tubular basket on the rear of the car.
Tilgate Mansion Crawley West Sussex
This is the first time I have ever seen such a wonderful photo of Tilgate Mansion, other than bits of it in the backgound of faded family snaps. It means a lot to me because my father, Peter, spent part of his youth living there sometime in the late 1950s with his family (Tayman of the Crawley area) and when he was courting my mother, Elizabeth Robinson, they spent many happy hours walking around the estate and lake.
Dad regaled me with many tales of ghosts and I can see why! It is such a shame they tore this place down, it was magnificent - all I have ever seen were some steps when I visited the site and some old photo's long since lost...
Dad used to play by the lake and took me there when I was a little girl.
Thank you so much for posting this picture...Blessed be. Pixi in Australia.
A Small Boy's Paradise
Moving from Lewisham in London to Three Bridges in 1953 was wonderful. I was only 9 and we were, I believe, the first family in the Birches. We had the river mole with rainbow trout, horses, rabbits, all manner of wildlife and forests to play in with hectic construction going on all around. It was just amazing - great memories.
Memorial Gardens/Recreation Ground
I am researching the history of the Memorial Gardens and wonder if anyone in Crawley has memories of when this was a recreation ground, and when exactly it bacame known as the Memorial Gardens - I think during the 1960s.
Thank you if you can help.
