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Following recent thinking on the elements 'horn' and 'leah', the place-name Horley is suggested as meaning 'horn-shaped common'. The common was apparently used to identify, as Hornley, a small pre-Domesday nucleated settlement that later became known as Lee Street associated with the horn-shaped, but now gone, Ley Green. The original settlement was probably connected with the conversion to farming of the central portion of Sutton's Wealden denn, but a lack of growth and its status as a cottage hamlet allowed the name to become attached to a wider area that included the possibly later and more important administrative centre around the manor house and church.