Burgess Hill Gas Holder To Be Exploded!

It must have been a very slow news week in Burgess Hill from November 14th-20th, as the front page of the Mid Sussex Times featured the news that the wonderful gas holder on Leylands Road is to be torn down to make way for new housing.


Sadly, the article was written from the ‘Hooray it’s going’ point of view. With a local resident pictured actually jumping for joy at the news.

However, we can just about forgive reporter Alex Christie-Miller for the direction that he took, as he did a fine job in exposing Lisa Smith as not being the sharpest knife in the draw. She makes what I would consider, many errors during her interview.

Here are just some of her fine quotes:

”I’ve lived in this house for three years and it’s an absolute nightmare, it blacks out so much light”

The gas holder has been in Burgess Hill for decades! So why move to a house if you didn’t like it blocking out the light?

”If it was up and working, then it has its uses but its got no purpose and it’s the ugliest thing to have next to your home, and it devalues the property”

Once again, the gas holder has been there longer than the time she has been living in her home, so how exactly has that devalued her property? And as for it being the ugliest thing to have next to your home, that is just a matter of opinion; we at Burgess Hill Uncovered think that it’s a beautiful structure; you could live next to far worse things, like a giant statue of Steve McClaren made out of marble.

Lisa’s best line was this effort:

”It’s very dangerous. When we first moved here my son was straight up it and I was terrified”

Way to go Lisa, make readers of the Mid-Sussex Times believe that you are unable to teach your child what’s right and wrong, and to be safety conscious, it’s not that hard to work out that climbing such a huge structure would be a tad dangerous, not to mention trespassing, which is of course breaking the law!

There is a lesson to be learnt here for all you potential media darlings, don’t say anything that can be used by a reporter to make you seem an idiot.

In closing, I’d like to congratulate Alex Christie-Miller on writing one of the most amusing Mid Sussex Times articles of this year.

Bedelands Farm Nature Reserve

On Friday 2nd November, a trip into town was taken in order to gain a map from the Burgess Hill town council help point, the map that we required was for the Bedelands Farm Nature Reserve. You see, over the past few months, people in pubs have been praising Scott McCarthy and myself for the Burgess Hill version of 'Is this the way to Amarillo' and had enquired as to when we'd be making another video. I decided that our next feature needed to promote something in Burgess Hill that some people may not even know about, the Bedelands Farm Nature Reserve was an obvious choice.

The lady in the help point was indeed helpful (and attractive, always a bonus!) however she seemed to find it surprising that two young men would be choosing to spend the afternoon visiting a nature reserve. To be honest, it's not a place that would be at the top of my places to visit in my spare time, but we had a reason to be going there and we weren't about to be telling her what that was. Having thanked the fine lady for her assistance, we popped into Iceland to buy some bread before making our way to the location.

As with many of our videos, we were producing on the fly, there's no storyboarding, scripting or viewing the area before we shoot. Working this way is an enjoyable challenge, having to come up with lighthearted scenes on the spot. I think we pulled it off quite well this time. Take a look.....



I've never explored the nature reserve in great detail before, so I found our jaunt out into the countryside interesting. The areas of woodland are very beautiful, it's certainly a place where you can go and gather your thoughts. I'd also recommend it as a destination to take a loved one, what exactly you get up to with them is your own business!

We met many charming female dog walkers during our time at Bedelands, they were more than happy to point us in the direction of the Mill Pond. One of the women that we met was Mary Smith, a member of the 'Friends Bedelands Farm' group. She was delighted to learn that we were doing a video about the area, however she thought we were doing it as a college project, I'm not sure how she'd have reacted to find out it would be appearing on a website famed for it's exposure of the public toilets and a gorilla called Gordon!

This video is just the first of many new pieces of content to be appearing on Burgess Hill Uncovered over the next month. We are finally moving forward.