Tilgate Forest
Tilgate Park is a large park situated in Tilgate, South-East Crawley. It is the largest and most popular park in the area. Although it is mostly associated with the area surrounding Tilgate Lake, a large area of the park is also silvicultural forest, there is also a Local Nature Reserve called Tilgate Nature Centre for protected and endangered species.
Originally a 2,185-acre (8.84 km2) part of the Worth Forest, the park and the surrounding areas (including the modern day Furnace Green, Three Bridges and part of the Ashdown Forest) were part of the larger Tilgate estate, first recorded in 1647. From that time, industries including Ironworks and furnaces were dismantled and replaced by a landed working estate.
The manor of Tilgate was bought by Sir Edward Culpeper and Sir Walter Covert, who owned the manor of nearby Slaugham, from Edward Nevill, 8th Baron Bergavenny in 1566. The manor house, known as Tilgate Mansion, was probably built by 1647. The manor passed with that of Slaugham down the Covert family line, before passing to another family, the Sergisons, in 1702. After a succession of owners in the early 19th century, it was purchased in 1862 by a wealthy businessman from India, George Ashburner.
Ashburner's daughter Sarah in 1865 at St Nicholas' Church, Worth, married John Hennings Nix, partner with his brother Edward Winkelmann Nix in the London bank Fuller Banbury Nix & Co (since absorbed by NatWest), and the couple took over the estate from her father, who died in 1869. It was Nix who built a large French-style mansion in the 1860s, called Tilgate House, and by 1900 had demolished the old mansion.
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