Three Bridges, at first a tiny hamlet, began to grow with the coming of the London and Brighton Railway in 1841.

Despite beliefs to the contrary, the village was named, not after rail bridges, but after three much older crossings over streams in the area (River Mole tributaries).

The hamlet became the site of an important railway junction in 1848 with the opening of the branch line to Horsham and thence to Portsmouth.

[1] The village changed radically with the coming of the New town development in the Crawley area in the late 1940s.

[4] It also educated two of the controversial Fertilizer Bomb plotters, Omar Khyam and Jawad Akbar who were arrested, charged and imprisoned for life sentences due to Government Home Security surveillance during Operation Crevice.