Angela Wigglesworth

The Sheffield Arms: The Life of a 200-year-old Sussex Coaching Inn, Home of Trading Boundaries Angela Wigglesworth

This is the story of The Sheffield Arms, a 200-year-old Sussex coaching inn built by the first Lord Sheffield in 1779, and the tenants and landlords who came and went over the years. Australian cricketers, who opened their tours of England in the 1880s and 1890s at nearby Sheffield Park stayed here; the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII came to watch the cricket in 1896 and the landlord of the Sheffield Arms helped provide the royal lunch; in the Second World War, British, Canadian and Welsh troops stationed in Sheffield Park would spend their evenings in the Sheffield Arms; a farmer recalls his time in the newly-fledged Home Guard; local people remember the dinner dances of the 1970s and 1980s; others remember the ghosts they've experienced in the old building.

In 1998, after lying empty for eighteen months, the building was bought by Michael Clifford and Tracy Thomson who gave it a new name: Trading Boundaries. It now has a retail showroom selling vintage Indian furniture and handicrafts, an art gallery and in 2021 they will be opening a boutique hotel for those attending their live music concerts and weddings.

Trading Boundaries is in East Sussex on the A275, half a mile north of the Bluebell Railway and Sheffield Park Gardens.