What's going on in Cuckfield and Bolnore village: news and information — Cuckfield Life - the community magazine for the village of Cuckfield

David Tingley

Cuckfield Christmas Tree Festival

Welcome to Cuckfield Life’s Cuckfield Christmas Tree Festival event page. Here you will find our most recent information for the Holy Trinity festival.

The first Cuckfield Christmas Tree Festival was in 2003 and it has been held almost every year. The Festival is set in the beautiful Holy Trinity Church in Cuckfield, West Sussex. Since the first festival, the total raised (as of 2024) for charity now stands at over £100,000! Without your support and help, this would not have been possible - thank you all.

See also, Cuckfield Christmas Tree Festival
Holy Trinity Church, Cuckfield

Cuckfield’s Christmas Tree Festival 2025 is confirmed for 5th-7th December. More details to come.

Update on the 2024 Festival

We want to thank everyone involved in last year’s Festival and we are happy to announce a total of £10,030 raised for charity. This has been shared between HOPE Charity Project and Holy Trinity Church.

Cuckfield Christmas Tree Festival 2024

The 2024 Cuckfield Christmas Tree Festival will take place Friday 6th to Sunday 8th December. The usual array of live trees will fill Holy Trinity Church from local schools, clubs, societies, and businesses. There will be the live musical programme as well as refreshments throughout, a ticketed concert by The Rock Choir on the Saturday evening and the festival will close on the Sunday with our annual Carol Concert. The charity being supported this year is called Hope Charity Project (www.hopecharityproject.org).

Opening times:
Friday 6th December 2024: Festival open 11.30am to 7.30pm.

Saturday 7th December 2024: Festival open 11.30pm to 6.00pm.
The Festival is followed by a concert by THE ROCK CHOIR at 7.45pm.

Sunday 8th December 2024: Festival open 11.30am to 5.30pm, followed by a Carol Service at 6pm, followed then by mulled wine and mince pies in the Old School.

Cuckfield’s Remembrance Sunday

Welcome to Cuckfield Life’s Remembrance information page. Here you will find our most recent information for all things Remembrance Sunday.

See also, Cuckfield Parish Council
and Holy Trinity Church, Cuckfield

Remembrance 2024

This year, we aim to relaunch the Cuckfield branch of the Royal British Legion. The Cuckfield branch will be selling poppies from the lobby of The Queen’s Hall on Friday 25th and Saturday 26th October and Friday 1st and Saturday 2nd November from 10am through to 12.30pm. I encourage you to join the Cuckfield branch (visit www.britishlegion.org.uk and select “Cuckfield”.

Remembrance Sunday on 10th November will be marked with a 10.45am service at the War Memorial, including a two-minute silence at 11am.
Following this, a church parade will take place at Holy Trinity, with refreshments in the Old School.
At 6pm, ‘For the Fallen’ will feature music, poetry, and reflections, honouring those lost or affected by war.

The boss and the bartender - the story of The White Harte, Cuckfield

Jordan and Kevin, at The White Harte, Cuckfield

By Jacqueline Elmore 

The growing trend of pubs being sold to property developers and turned into houses, flats or shops has been on the rise for years. More than 150 pubs shut for good in England and Wales in the first quarter of 2023 with a heavy portion of them being snapped up by developers the minute they went on the market. 

We only have to look at the Ship Inn on Whitemans Green to see how that turned out; once a traditional family owned pub that closed its doors in 2014 and was then converted into a Co-op store. 

There are now only four public houses in Cuckfield, all important in their own unique way and each one of them catering to a different audience. 

Over the years, I have interviewed a number of publicans in and around the area; some new to the business and some who have been at it for years. 

In early 2019, I spoke to pub keeper Jim Ayling, who at the time, with his partner, Jackie had skillfully served the community as landlord of The White Harte in Cuckfield for almost two decades, before brewery Hall and Woodhouse sold it to an independent party. 

Last month, I finally got to sit down with the pubs’ new owner, Kevin Smith to find out how he, a retired helicopter engineer found himself in possession of a 15th century coaching inn and how, with the help of Bar Manager, Jordan Johnson have managed to turn the local drinking den into something of a destination pub. 

Kevin explains: “It must have been around Christmas time, about ten years ago when my friends and I got chatting to some of the locals who were talking about how the pub was going up for sale, and the person that wanted to buy it was a property developer who was planning to turn it into houses. Well that didn’t really sit right with us, given the pubs long-standing history, and its place in the community so my friend and I put in an offer in the hope that we could purchase it before it was sold for good.” 

The developers ended up pulling out of the sale leaving Jim and Jackie to hang on to the pub for a few more years. 

“Once the sale had fallen through, we asked the brewery that if ever they decided to sell the pub again that they come back to us to let us know. And that was exactly what happened. One day I got a call out of the blue from Hall and Woodhouse asking if we were still interested in buying the pub.” 

[This is an excerpt from the full article, published in the August 2023 issue of Cuckfield Life]