The village began as a scattered group of houses around an unenclosed common before the 19th century, and by 1844 there were about twelve houses and an inn. Deposits of Horsham Stone have long been quarried in the area and in 2016 one working quarry existed to west of the village. In spite of the enclosure of the heath in the 1850s, there was little further development until the late 1880s when land along the main Horsham to Five Oaks Road was offered for sale and a number of semi-detached houses were built there over the next 13 years.