The name Peaspottage Gate first appears on Budgen's Map of Sussex made in 1724 at the southern end of a road from Crawley where it met the Ridgeway, and is on the border of the parishes of Slaugham and Worth.

This pre-historic ridgeway pre-dated the predominantly north–south-oriented Roman roads built by the Romans to link the south coast of England to London, and to connect with the strategically important Wealden iron industry, such as the London to Brighton trunk road 5 miles (8.0 km) east of Pease Pottage and Stane Street further to the west.

The route can be traced on Ordnance Survey maps and can be discerned on the ground in various places e.g. as an old sunken trackway running through Worth Forest east of Pease Pottage.

[clarification needed] The Middle Saxons extended south from the Thames valley and created the sub-kingdom of Sudergeona (Surrey).

The River Ouse was navigable for small boats from Lewes up to Cuckfield from where higher drier ground and less dense vegetation made progress north easier.

A shorter but wetter (probably impassable in the winter) shortcut developed along Parish Lane crossing Standford Brook at Cinder Banks.

Seymour suffered the same fate, and an inventory of his property taken in 1550 gives detailed information of the furnace which included 29 guns and six tons of shot.

"In Reminiscences of Horsham by Henry Burstow he states that on 4 October 1837 he went to Pease Pottage to see Queen Victoria pass through on her way from London to Brighton.

Pease Pottage would have benefited from the toll roads, but lost the Crawley-Horsham traffic in 1823 with the opening of the new McAdam road through Faygate, and the London and Brighton Railway completed in 1841 which skirted along the eastern boundary of Pease Pottage cutting through Tilgate Forest alongside Standford Brook and through a tunnel under High Street.

In 1896 on the day after the red flag law expired, 25 cars left London for Brighton, but half had broken down by Crawley.

This event is still celebrated in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run which still goes past Pease Pottage on the first Sunday in November.

[citation needed] To the south of Pease Pottage is Tilgate Forest Row which had three shops, a blacksmith and post office.

The next major change to Pease Pottage was the opening of the M23 motorway in 1975 which continued as the A23 road, a two lane dual carriageway south to Handcross with the houses of Tilgate Forest Row facing onto it.

There are a number of commercial activities in the village, including the large car breakers yard on Brighton Road.

Just south of this was the British Airports Authority Management Centre, the site next occupied by the Crawley Forest School[8] opened on 18 September 2009 by Gloria Hunniford.

The registration was for a mixed provision (i.e. boys and girls) with an age range of 7–18 years and caters for 35 residential and 20-day pupils.

The site is now occupied by the controversial 'Cedars' UK Borders Agency Detention Centre,[9][10] housing families temporarily before deportation.

[citation needed] There are also large warehouses next to the old crossroads, and two small industrial parks – one between Brighton Road and the A23, and the other along Parish Lane.

Finally there are some units at the golf driving range on the west of the village and the old Met Office site next door (which is strictly in Colgate).

[citation needed] The new Buchan House was built in 1883 by Philip Feril Renault Saillard who made his money from a new dye used for ostrich feathers.

[citation needed] It was located NE of the original which was subsequently demolished, and had three drives – north, south and east.

It was designed by the London partnership of Ernest George and Harold Peto, and Sir Edwin Lutyens was also involved.

[12] Pease Pottage featured in the 1953 film Genevieve as a very remote village deep in the Sussex countryside.

Pease Pottage was also featured in the 1911 novel The Four Men: A Farrago by Hilaire Belloc as the starting point of a side road.