White Hart Inn, Crawley

The White Hart Inn, also known as the White Hart Hotel, is a coaching inn on the High Street in Crawley, a town and borough in West Sussex, England. Built in the late 18th century to replace an older inn also under the sign of the White Hart, it also served as Crawley's main post office for most of the 19th century, and still operates as a public house in the 21st century. Its partly timber-framed structure, which incorporates part of an early 17th-century building, is characteristic of the area. It is designated a Grade II Listed building.HistoryCrawley developed slowly as a Wealden market town and ironmaking centre, focused on its north–south High Street, from the 13th century onwards. This street formed part of the main road from the capital city, London, to the increasingly fashionable seaside resort of Brighton. After the road was turnpiked in stages between the late 17th century and the mid-18th century, Crawley's position almost exactly halfway between the two allowed it to develop a prominent new role as a convenient stop for stagecoach passengers and drivers. By the late 18th century, it had become Sussex's main staging-post for journeys to and from London, as the neighbouring towns of Horsham and East Grinstead fell out of favour.