For hundreds of years, the shifting shingle within it’s bay has caused problems for the town of Seaford. Even today we try to tame this movement with a convoy of massive bulldozers which try to put the beach in its place. The Ouse once entered the sea in Seaford Bay but the shingle constantly blocked…
Category: East Sussex
27,000 MILES TO SUSSEX
In my family archive I have a small cutting titled “27,000 MILES TO VISIT FATHER’S GRAVE” This is just the thing that piques my interest and encourages me to find out more. Well here is the story! Ernest Alfred Berry was born on 10th December 1870 in Taunton, Somerset , the son of an umbrella-maker Alfred…
Honour your eyes and visit West Dean!
Every year tens of thousands of visitors get off the bus at Exceat and head along the river to view Cuckmere Haven and the magnificent Seven Sisters. However if those visitors went in the opposite direction, a short walk up a hill and then down into a fold of the South Downs they would find…
The world’s top policeman lived in Sussex and everyone knew where!
The 1950s editions of the Kelly’s Directory for Eastbourne show the occupant of 50, St John’s Road, Meads as “SILLITOE. Sir Percy K.B.E.” This is remarkable considering that Sir Percy was the head of MI5 and was a noted opponent of violent street gangs. Percy Joseph Sillitoe was born in London on 22nd May 1888 and was educated…
Strange Numbers on Sussex Homes
As you leave Seaford heading east towards Eastbourne, the cottage on your right seems to have a very high number – 151 – surely there are not that many houses in narrow Chyngton Lane? In nearby Bishopstone, the old Post Office is now divided into three cottages numbered 133, 134 and 135 ! I recently…
PC White and the Stolen Safe
I thought you may like to hear about one of the long standing characters of the Sussex Police, Charles White who served in Seaford as both constable and detective for 37 years. (and – after his retirement served a further eight years as a civilian.) Luckily he wrote a brief memoire of his service which…
An African slave buried at Brighton
The grave of 12-year-old Tom Highflyer is not easy to find. It is amongst the steep, dark overgrown slopes of the Woodvale extra-mural cemetery at Brighton. I had heard of him and wanted to visit the grave and pay my respects which I did this morning. The headstone reads IN MEMORY OF TOM M.S. HIGHFLYER RESCUED FROM…
Church Vergers for 202 years!
Simeon Hart was born in Old Town, Eastbourne in 1844. He was born in an ‘old-fashioned tumbledown cottage’ that until 1898 stood on the corner of the High Street and Star Lane. (roughly were the front or Waitrose is now) He was the son of George and Mary Hart and his family had a long…
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…
A Policeman involved in a Sussex Disaster
This story starts with a sepia coloured photograph in the archives of the British Transport Police History Group titled ‘William Holman – Brighton Railway Police’. The photograph shows a bewhiskered, top-hatted man making a note in his pocket-book. But who was he? William Holman was born in Ightham, Kent in 1801. He was married to…
Quirky Sussex History by Kevin Gordon 