Where to Stay in Crawley, England

What is Crawley known for?

The airport is the single biggest influence on the town, and its presence explains why a borough of West Sussex on the Surrey border keeps the hotel trade it does. Older parishes survive around it: St John the Baptist's Church, St Margaret's Church, Ifield and St Nicholas' Church, Worth. Ifield Water Mill and Ifield Mill House stand together.

K2 Crawley, the Tilgate Nature Centre and Crawley Museum give the town its own draws, and the High Weald National Landscape begins just past the southern parts of the borough.

What are the main landmarks in Crawley?

Churches, a mill, a museum. St John the Baptist's Church, Crawley, St Margaret's Church, Ifield, St Nicholas' Church, Worth and St Michael and All Angels Church, Lowfield Heath spread the parish record across the borough. The Friary Church of St Francis and St Anthony, Crawley joins them.

Ifield Water Mill and Ifield Mill House survive on the western side, and Crawley Museum, The Old House, Sycamore House, Street House and the Toll House hold the older town. K2 Crawley and the Tilgate Nature Centre are the newer names.

What is the history of Crawley?

The parishes came before the borough: St John the Baptist's Church, Crawley, St Margaret's Church, Ifield and St Nicholas' Church, Worth each served a separate settlement on this ground. Ifield had its mill. Ifield Water Mill and Ifield Mill House record a working water course on the western side, the sort of thing that anchored a village long before a town absorbed it.

The Toll House names a road that mattered. Street House, Sycamore House and The Old House survive from the same older fabric, and Crawley Museum holds what is left of the account. Crawley grew into a large town and borough of West Sussex, taking in Ifield, Worth and Lowfield Heath, whose St Michael and All Angels Church, Lowfield Heath still marks that northern edge.

Then came the airport. Gatwick Airport became the biggest single influence on the town, and the borough's shape since has followed it as much as anything else. The Friary Church of St Francis and St Anthony, Crawley, K2 Crawley and the Tilgate Nature Centre belong to the later town rather than to the villages.

Southern parts of the borough still touch the High Weald National Landscape, and Chichester, the county town, lies thirty-two miles off.

Where is Crawley?

Crawley covers the northern part of West Sussex, on the border with Surrey, twenty-eight miles south of London and eighteen north of Brighton and Hove. The Weald begins south. Southern parts of the borough lie immediately next to the High Weald National Landscape, and Chichester, the county town, is thirty-two miles off.

Ifield, Worth and Lowfield Heath are the older settlements the borough took in, with Gatwick Airport at the far side of Lowfield Heath.

What is the climate of Crawley?

The Weald sits at its back. The High Weald National Landscape lies between the southern borough and the coast at Brighton and Hove, so Crawley's temperate year reads more inland than eighteen miles from the sea would suggest. Tilgate Nature Centre keeps the seasons visible.

Grey mild spells outnumber extremes here, and the walks around Ifield Water Mill and out into the Weald work through most of the year.

How do you get to Crawley?

Gatwick Airport is the way most people arrive, sitting beside the borough's northern settlement of Lowfield Heath and putting Crawley within minutes of a terminal. London is twenty-eight miles north. Brighton and Hove lies eighteen miles south, and Crawley stands north-east of Chichester, the county town of West Sussex, thirty-two miles out.

The Surrey border runs along the top of the borough, so an approach from the north crosses it before reaching Ifield, Worth or the Tilgate side.