Well enough online, poorly on the ground. Half the workers never commute at all. Almost nobody takes the train. Most households run more than one car. Mayfield is connected by broadband and by driveway, in that order.
The railway is somebody else's. The nearest stations are Crowborough and Wadhurst, both a drive away, and Census 2021 found only about 1% of working residents taking the train to work. Buses fare worse: Mayfield has 12 bus stops, and under 1% of workers use them to commute. Public transport exists here in the sense that it is technically on the map.
The village's real commuting answer is not to commute. About 50% of working residents work from home, and about 39% drive. Around 5% walk, which in a village this size means they work in it. Car ownership matches the pattern: about 56% of households run two or more cars, and only about 8% have none. For most households, the second car is the public transport.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics, modelled for the area in 2019 rather than from any particular front door, put the nearest town centre about 17 minutes away by car, 29 by public transport, 34 by bike and 96 minutes on foot. A walk of an hour and a half is a hike, not a trip to town. Anyone planning to live here without driving is choosing between a bus timetable and a long walk.
Broadband is the part that works. About 99% of premises can get superfast broadband and about 69% can get gigabit, and no premises fall below the universal service minimum. For a village where half the workforce works from the spare room, that is the connection that matters, and it mostly holds up. The houses that miss out on gigabit are worth checking before an offer, not after the first video call.
Mobile coverage is solid: every postcode gets 4G or 5G from at least one operator, and about 97% from all of them.
Everyday errands are manageable. The same Department for Transport modelling puts a GP about 7 minutes away by car, 14 on foot and 12 by public transport, and a food shop about 12 minutes' walk or 7 by car. Employment centres are about 5 minutes by car and 24 by public transport. The hospital is the problem: about 32 minutes by car and roughly 89 minutes by public transport. The public transport times date from 2019, and services have been cut in many places since, so treat them as the optimistic version. The car times are the ones to plan around.
The buses themselves are thin but not extinct. Mayfield's stops average 25 scheduled weekday departures each, but at peak hour the average stop sees 0.5 departures, which is a rush hour in name only. All the stops with service data have at least some weekend service. Counting departures matters here: a stop with a timetable pinned to it is not the same thing as a bus that turns up when a commuter needs one.
The main road is the price of having one. About 27% of Mayfield's postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official mapping treats traffic noise as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 70 decibels. There is no rail noise to speak of, which makes sense in a village without a railway. How loud any particular house is depends on its walls, its windows and which side the bedrooms face, so stand in the garden on a weekday morning before deciding.
Mayfield is middling for connections. Broadband and mobile coverage are good enough for working from home, but without a car the trains and buses won't carry a normal working week.