Windows for the timber-framed hamlet of Adversane
On Stane Street, just south of Billingshurst village
The hamlet
Adversane sits on Stane Street, now the A29, a short way south of Billingshurst and inside Billingshurst parish. Its centre is the crossroads where Adversane Lane runs east and Lordings Road runs west. It has been a conservation area since the mid-1970s, and Horsham District Council published a fresh appraisal and management plan in November 2025, keeping the boundary as drawn.
The appraisal traces the settlement to 1279, when it was written as Hadesfoldesberne; the name Adversane settled only in the mid-nineteenth century. It grew as a stopping place for travellers and drovers. A fair was held on the green each September, the railway that opened in October 1859 crosses Adversane Lane, and a mission hall followed in the 1920s.
Its listed buildings include the seventeenth-century Old House, the eighteenth-century Blacksmiths Arms, named after a forge that has since gone, and Stane Street Cottages, a former malthouse of the mid-1800s. Out in the fields stand Griggs Farmhouse from the sixteenth century, Southlands and Juppsland from the seventeenth, and Sayers Farmhouse from the eighteenth.
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Windows in Adversane
The oldest buildings are timber framed with red brick infill, roofed in Horsham stone slabs or handmade clay tiles. Later houses use local stone, red brick with burnt headers and hanging tiles. The appraisal names timber casements as the traditional window.
It also names plastic replacing wooden windows as the main threat to the hamlet, because the changes add up house by house. It asks owners to keep and repair historic windows and glass, and where replacement is needed, to copy the original or use a design from the building's own period, the same way across each building.
Depending on the building (listed, conservation area, Article 4), there can be rules on the glass you're allowed and on the exact glazing-bar layout. Check with the council; Billingshurst Windows can help with that process.
Off the crossroads, on the lanes outside the boundary, flush casements with cottage bars give the look of the old windows.