Welcome to the Rudgwick Preservation Society website
The Society was founded in 1984 to promote the amenities of Rudgwick, to protect its natural history and architectural features of beauty and interest.
Rudgwick is a parish in the north of West Sussex, west of Horsham. The village is adjacent to the boundary with Surrey. To contact us about Rudgwick click this link.
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RPS has a Walks Programme, which began in 1989, and this continues every Summer, May to August, on Tuesdays at 7.00 p.m. All are welcome.
Our main publication is the twice-yearly Newsletter (now called Review) dealing with planning, history and our environment. Past issues are available from the Newsletters/Reviews page.
Rudgwick Preservation Society also publishes a number of books on the village and walks in the surrounding area. These are listed on the Publications page, and can be obtained from the Society by post (contact us using the link above), in the case of the booklet of walks, from the Mucky Duck Inn and from the Wey & Arun Canal Trust’s Canal Centre in Loxwood.
The Stan Smith Archive is a collection of documents, notes, photographs maps and ephemera relating to the village and the surrounding area. Enquiries are welcome, and donations or scanned copies of documents, maps and photographs to add to the history of Rudgwick parish are always welcome.
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Rudgwick Preservation Society 
May I say that if you wish to maintain the natural beauty of Rudgwick, allowing the movement of lorries to and from the now Harrisons infill will not only ruin the peace and “natural beauty” of the village but put all the listed buildings under risk of subsidence and vibrations from so many lorries will no doubt have an effect on the foundations, how could this be allowed to happen.
Thank you for your comment, which I fully understand as a valid and rational response to the threats you are concerned about. It is important to remember the lorries will be substantially smaller than those used by Wienerberger, and they are strictly time limited to 4 and a bit years, whereas if we had had a continued brick making presence we would have had vehicle movements ad infinitum. A proportion of the landfill vehicles will go north, not all south.
Are you aware that there is a legal obligation on the new owners of the site to infill the pit, as it was a condition of the brick works operation in the W Sussex Minerals Plan? They had no choice. The only choice they had was what land use to return it to. RPS is strongly of the opinion that farmland is exactly what it should be returned to (which utilises benign natural infill material). There is very little of environmental note there, as surveyed by both the County and the developers.
The alternatives to ownership by a farming enterprise could have been much worse for the village – possible landfill of household rubbish; possble large scale industrial development, possible housing estate, etc, and a lack of appreciation of local feelings.
Did you know one of the conditions (and there are many) is to set up a local community forum to monitor the infill period? Why not look out for an opportunity to join this?
I hope this helps a little. Of course, not everyone likes change, and we must all be vigilant. I think it very unlikely your comments on house foundations will come true, but if it did, you owners would have every right to be angry and demand compensation. Wear and tear on the roads is dealt with by another condition.
Whilst out walking with my children we passed a lovely bench with hannah and amy sturt remembrance understandably my children asked questions I could not answer …what is the tragic history of this memorial