Heaven Farm

Nestling close to the edge of Sussex’s Ashdown Forest, with beautiful countryside views, and surrounded by Chelwood Gate, Chailey, The Bluebell Steam Railway and Sheffield Park Gardens, lies Heaven Farm.

Famous for its' nature trail, magnificent spring display of bluebells and its foxgloves which stand tall above a carpet of lush green in the summer, this unique farm is well documented back to the year 1387. It is said that “time stood still” here and walking around the now one-hundred-and-eighty-year-old farm buildings, you can understand why. You can imagine the Saxon pig-drovers and the Iron Age people, whilst treading the trail of hammer ponds an undulating countryside. Ashdown Forest is a section of the original St. Leonard’s Forest - the great forest of Andereswald - which lay between the North and South Downs and stretched east to west for a hundred miles, inhabited by deer, wolves, wild boar, and, of course, man. St. Leonard’s Forest has seen Saxon pig drovers, iron smelters, Romans, Tudors and smugglers through its years; the area now being known as The Weald of Sussex - no longer a giant forest but a patchwork of woodlands and heath, interspersed with areas of farmland and intersected by a series of streams… a place of much folklore and legend.

The present farm buildings at Heaven Farm have graced the area since 1830, and boast the Farmhouse itself, surrounded by a courtyard type area, which comprises several outbuildings; Cowsheds, The Hovels, Stables, a Granary, a large Barn, a Blacksmith’s Shop, a Piggery and an Oasthouse form a letter ‘L’ around the farmhouse. Then behind the Barn and Blacksmith’s Shop, lies the Slaughterhouse. The typically Victorian farm, which remains almost unchanged since it’s erection is in a remarkable state of preservation. Some of the outbuildings now house a farm museum, a craft shop a tea room and an organic farm shop.

The Farm Museum depicts the flow of change in farming and the domestic lives of the families who have lived there, spanning one-hundred-and-twenty years, from the first farmer in 1830 to the end of occupancy of his grandchildren's generation, in the 1950s. There is a lot of interesting farm machinery here, which has been used down through the ages.

The Cart Lodge Craft Shop

What was once the Cart Shed, has now been converted into the Cart Lodge Craft Shop; a delightful little shop full of locally crafted gifts, products and mementos for all ages, even down to plants and sundries for the garden. The items for sale depict many traditional and modern craft skills of the local people.

The Nature Trail

This takes in a woodland park and waterside walk around the farm, with its abundance of beautiful white wood anemones and rich, blue carpet of bluebells in spring or in summer, it’s rich, green glades of foxgloves, attracting the bees. Further along the trail, you will encounter an ancient Bloomery, which is thought to have survived since Roman times, the Millennium Water Wheel, an old pack horse bridge, a three-hundred-year old dam, and many badger sets and foxes’ earths bored into the undergrowth. On the final part of the trail, as you come back towards the Farmhouse, you can see a pen with wallabies and their joeys hopping around, or merely lazing in the afternoon sun. Many a sunny afternoon could be whiled away in the cool woodland and beside the water, on a wooden bench.

The Stable Tea Rooms and Restaurant

A welcome place on return from the Nature Trail, the Stable Tea Rooms, which are set in the peaceful farmland, with wonderful countryside views, can provide you with morning coffee, a ploughman’s lunch, hot meals or afternoon tea, to name but a few. The cream tea includes scones, clotted cream, strawberry jam and a pot of tea… a delightful, afternoon refreshment which you can enjoy at a picnic table on the lawn, or inside the Tea Rooms.

Kids and grown-ups alike, adore Heaven Farm. So, if ever in Sussex, England, why not pay a visit, and experience time standing still for a while.