The Road-Poet of Black Robin Farm

There is plan to spend millions of pounds of government funding to create a second Towner Art Gallery at Black Robin Farm at Beachy Head. I don’t know what my ancestor Ephraim Mitchell would have thought of that, as he lived at Black Robin Farm. However I do know how he would have responded to the news – in poetry!

Ephraim Mitchell was the father of my great-great uncle. He was born at Exceat Farm in 1852. His father (also Ephraim) and brother were both Farm Bailiffs for Meads Place Farm.

He moved to Eastbourne when he got a job working as a ‘road man’ for Eastbourne Council. This job was also referred to as a ‘scavenger’ and his task was to upkeep local roads and keep them tidy. For several years he lived with his brother at Black Robin Farm up on Beachy Head so I imagine that he helped to maintain the downland roads and tracks.

He later moved to 2, Pond Cottage, Meads (roughly where Gaudick Road is today) As the area between Meads and Eastbourne was farmland, every day he walked across the fields to Grove Road Corporation Depot to find out what his duties were for the day. In October 1879 he married Jane Ann Backshall from Ardingly and she moved in with him.

Pond Cottages (left- incorrectly described as Rose Cottages)

Ephraim’s brother David (1860-1938) was an Eastbourne lamp-lighter but went on to be the Mace Bearer for Eastbourne’s Mayor.

Whilst Ephraim was working, he composed poems and when he got home he wrote them down and sent them to the local papers where they were published under his initials EM. Once, one of his verses was copied and published in a ‘London newspaper’. Often the letters he sent to friends were also in the form of verse.

When asked about his poems in June 1910, Ephraim said “I write poetry for recreation – after a day of manual labour I find it refreshing to sit down in the evening and work with my pen for a while. It is not always in the evening that I work though. Very often when I am walking along the road engaged in my work, a subject for a verse occurs to me, and at the first opportunity I set it down on a piece of paper.”. The report went on to say that Ephraim was so well known in Meads that local residents would often provide him with a cup of tea whilst he was at work.

He was a devout man and his poems often had a religious flavour and for over fifty years Ephraim worked as a Sunday School teacher at the Grove Road Baptist Church.

One day in 1903 he was on his rounds when he spotted a fire in a haystack at Upwick Farm (just off the East Dean Road and owned by Mr Miller of Ocklynge Road) . Ephraim raised the alarm and the fire engine from Old Town Fire Station in Watts Lane attended. Ephraim helped to dowse the flames with buckets of water whilst the outside of the stack was cut away. The Eastbourne Gazette said the cause of the fire was ‘over heating’ (which seems a bit obvious to me!)

One of Ephraim’s poems was included in an anthology published in 1910 by the poet Charles Forshaw (1863-1917). Forshaw collected and published poems by little known (usually Yorkshire) rural poets.

In June 1911 poor Ephraim was robbed! The local press reported ‘Early on Friday morning, Mr Mitchell (the road-poet) proceeded to work as usual taking with him, food, a drink and his homemade sou’wester which he placed in a building in Meads. Some dishonest person made his way into the structure and appropriated most of his food and his hat.’

In 1905, the Mitchell family were living at 2, Summerdown Cottages, Old Town and by 1911 they had moved to St Mary’s Cottages, Old Town. (They were next to the school in Church Street)

Ephraim died of bronchial pneumonia at St Mary’s Hospital in July 1927. At his funeral, the pastor of his church, the Reverend Henry Popham, said that Ephraim was “A natural gentleman and a man in every respect above the average working man”. Ephraim, the Road-Poet was buried at Ocklynge Cemetery (Grave J904c)

His obituary in the Eastbourne Gazette said that ‘the landmarks in his career were few, his was a quiet orderly life, full of labour and serenity, but devoid of anything sensational’ Unusually they also printed a photograph of his burial. His grave is low and difficult to find.

Ephraim’s eldest son (another Ephraim!) married my great-great aunt, Ellen Mercy Bennett (1976-1953). Another son, Christopher emigrated to Canada where he joined the Mounted Police.