Hassocks itself has a town centre and a well-used community centre called Adastra Hall which is used for a wide range of community and private events. The former council buildings, which housed the road maintenance department on London Road, have been demolished and have become a number of homes, whilst the land given to the people of Hassocks (via East Sussex County Council) by a benefactor, previously used by a children's charity, was built upon in 2014/15, the charity having claimed ownership. Two miles west of Hassocks in the adjoining village of
Hurstpierpoint lies
Danny House, an Elizabethan manor where
David Lloyd George came to draw up terms for the armistice at the end of World War I. On the downs above Hassocks there are two windmills, named
Clayton Windmills but known locally as "Jack and Jill". Jack is a tower mill and was built in 1866. Jill, a post mill, was built in Dyke Road in Brighton in 1821 and was later moved to Clayton in 1852 by a team of oxen. The working life of the mills ended in about 1906, and Jack is now in private ownership; Jill was restored in 1986 and is open to the public. To the North East of the village can be found
Oldland Mill.
Listed buildings Hassocks civil parish contains 27
listed buildings. Of these, one is Grade I, three are Grade II* and the remaining 23 buildings are Grade II. Grade I listed buildings: •
The Parish Church of St John the Baptist, Clayton, an Anglo-Saxon church, noted for its 12th century wall paintings (List Entry Number 1286147). Grade II* listed buildings: • Ockley Manor (List Entry Number 1285397), an early 18th century house. • Clayton Priory (List Entry Number 1354811), a
Regency country house built about 1820. The architect was possibly
John Rebecca of Worthing. •
Clayton Windmills and the Millhouse Attached (List Entry Number 1354812), better known as 'Jack and Jill' windmills.
Scheduled monuments The parish contains one
scheduled monument: • Round barrows West of Ditchling Beacon (List Entry Number 1005830), four bowl barrows, forming part of a round barrow cemetery. The barrows have been levelled by ploughing but survive as buried remains.
Sites of Special Scientific Interest There is a
Site of Special Scientific Interest within the parish.
Clayton to Offham Escarpment, which stretches from Hassocks in the west, passing through many parishes including Ditchling, to Lewes in the East. This site is of biological importance due to its rare chalk grassland habitat along with its woodland and scrub.
Woods There are a number of ancient woods to the north of the Clayton Tunnel and south of Hassocks village. They sit on
Gault Clay beds and are divided by the Brighton Railway Line and the A273 Burgess Hill Road.
Butcher's Wood To the south of Hassocks stations is a small
ancient woodland known as Butcher's Wood (). The wood is mainly
oak and
hazel, but there is a small
hornbeam grove at the south end. The ground flora is in part
wood anemome and in part
bluebell. It was acquired by the
Woodland Trust in 1988 and is the only one of the
Gault woods in quasi-public ownership. There is a northern section that was shaved off for house-building and its western side separated by the railway line. There is re-coppicing work, which help the many song birds that thrive here.
Treecreepers and
nuthatches benefit too from the added structural complexity.
Lag Wood Lag Wood () is a wet wood. The Saxon word 'lag' implies brook meadow.
Herrings Stream The Herrings stream starts where the Millbrook Shaw and Clayton Stream meet and the continues through the village, bright and clean, but is almost unnoticeable. It goes just east of Hassocks Station, and as the Keymer Road kinks to the right after the old school () it passes under the road at the Roman Road's ancient fording point, which used to be known as Spitalford. Eventually the trees will create a woodland which will fall within the boundaries of the new
South Downs National Park. It already supports a number of rare species including
soprano pipistrelle bats and
great crested newts. Few sites on the
South Downs can match its botanical richness. There are
blackberries,
crab apple,
sloe berries, and pink and orange
spindle berries. There may be as many at least twenty-five scrub species, eighteen of which have fleshy and colourful fruits and eleven of which of are members of the rose family. On the roses and dogwood
Robin's pincushion has been created by the
Diplolepis rosae gall wasp.
Clayton Holt Clayton Holt () is a downland wood that is thought to have stood for ten thousand years or more with at least thirteen ancient woodland indicator species, including two big hybrid
large-leaved/
small-leaved limes growing at the base of slope. Up until 1838 there was a
large-leaved lime, a signal that the woodland on this site has been here for millennia. It is also one of the best places on the
Downs to see veteran
beeches. The
lesser butterfly orchid, which is much rarer than its ‘
greater’ cousin, has also been found here. ==Railway station==