Burgess Hill

Burgess Hill takes its name from a medieval family whose surname meant "bourgeois", and the town has spent every century since living up to it with no irony whatsoever. The Victorian pleasure lake, where a butcher heavy enough to count as the safety test walked the winter ice before anyone else skated, is now a business park, which settles the question of priorities. Hassocks drives up for the big shop and goes home to feel superior about it. Burgess Hill has made its peace with being the useful one.