With a fortune built on ancestral landholdings and later on iron making, the Levetts held land across Sussex.

At a local level, Catsfield is governed by a parish council which is responsible for street lighting, allotments and recreational areas.

[5] East Sussex county council is the third tier of government, providing education, libraries and highway maintenance.

[7] The National Monuments Record documents sites of Roman cremation, post-medieval iron works and architectural remains in Catsfield.

While excavating for a rain-water drain about 6 feet from the house and at a depth of 10–12 inches, a workman James Hodgkin found a pottery vessel of about one gallon capacity.

The British Museum assessed the smaller vessel as the remains of a small Roman vase commonly found with cremated burials.

The name "Hamerwyse" is given to the meadow at the site in a 13th-century document suggesting a bloomery and in a lease of 1582 it is mentioned as "lyemeweke or lyerne Forge and Foryers".

Across the valley of Watermill Stream is a breached pond-bay containing sufficient forge cinder to indicate ironworking nearby.

[12] Many suggestions have been made about the origin of the name Catsfield but it is unlikely its true derivation will ever be known as the early Britons, Romans and Saxons left few written records.

One theory advanced is the village takes its name from a North Saxon or Belgic tribe called the Catti, who were known to have settled in Sussex in Roman times, and another based on a tradition that a church was built in Catsfield by Saint Chad of Lichfield, or his brother St. Cedd who was active in the South East, hence Caedsfeld or Chaddesfield.

[13] William Markwick, an inhabitant of Catsfield and a Fellow of the Linnaean Society, made pioneering observations in phenology, the times at which natural events such as when the first call of the cuckoo is heard or when the first primrose blooms.