Balcombe Lane

Balcombe Lane

Coordinates: 51°03′24″N 0°08′14″W / 51.0567°N 0.1371°W / 51.0567; -0.1371

Balcombe is a village and civil parish in the Mid Sussex district of West Sussex, England. It lies 31 miles (50 km) south of London, 16 miles (26 km) north of Brighton, and 32 miles (51 km) east northeast of the county town of Chichester. Nearby towns include Crawley to the northwest and Haywards Heath to the south southeast. The village is approximately halfway between London and the coastal city of Brighton.

It is possible that the name Balcombe means "Mining Place Camp". Bal is a Cornish word meaning a mining place as in Bal Maidens, so it is possible that the same word existed in Ancient British Celtic. Although Coombe or Combe can mean a valley it can also come from the Roman "camp". So possibly from its name Balcombe could have once been a Romano-British mining settlement.

South of Balcombe on the London to Brighton railway line is the Ouse Valley Viaduct. Designed and engineered by John Urpeth Rastrick (1780–1856) in consultation with the talented architect David Mocatta it was completed in 1842 . It is 100 feet (30 m) high and 500 yards long. It has 37 arches and was built with 11 million imported Dutch bricks.

The village has a series of murals about World War I in its Victory Hall. Lady Gertrude Denman commissioned artist Neville Lytton to paint the thirty-four feet long by ten feet high frescoes. The murals were featured on a television programme about the war in 2005.

It was the birthplace of Colour Sergeant (later Lieutenant Colonel) Frank Bourne DCM, who fought at the battle of Rorke's Drift in the Zulu War, and who was the last British survivor of that battle when he died in Dorking in 1945. Famous residents included actor Paul Scofield.

The River Ouse was once navigable from the south coast to Balcombe.