One of the great losses of the Great War was the enigmatic Field Marshall Lord (Horatio Herbert) Kitchener whose face and pointing finger recruited thousands of men. He was Secretary of State for War and a Cabinet Minister. In 1904 a young man had joined Lord Kitchener’s Staff. He was Oswald Arthur Gerald Fitzgerald from Eastbourne,…
Category: Seaford
A Nutty Shipwreck and her Figurehead
A few years ago I was shown two ivory nuts which had just been found on the beach at Seaford. Although the shingle of Seaford beach is relatively new I think that they may have originated from the hold of the ship the ‘Peruvian’ which grounded in Seaford Bay over 100 years ago. The…
The Sussex Stile Council
If, like me, you love to wander across the South Downs and the Sussex countryside you will often use gates and stiles. Gates were traditionally wide enough to allow a farmer to manoeuvre a horse drawn hay-cart through and were made of wood. Today however farm gates are wider and usually made of cylindrical metal….
The Prime Minister who helped a Sussex Coastguardsman.
Not many small towns like Seaford can claim to have had three of its MPs serve as Prime Minister. George Canning was the only one of the three who was MP for Seaford and Prime Minister at the same time. George Canning was born in Marylebone in 1770 and had a difficult start to life….
The Downland Shepherd-Archaeologist
Stephen Blackmore was born on 1st February 1832 in Falmer, the son of an agricultural labourer. As a young boy he worked at Stanmer House near Falmer in the service the Duke of Newcastle. But it seems he was keen to be outside on the land and soon was working as a labourer on nearby…
Quicksilver and Lemons
The ‘Nympha Americana’ was a Spanish owned American ship of 400 tons however, despite being armed with 23 large guns and 6 swivel guns, she was captured by an English privateer ‘The Royal Family‘ off Cadiz in March 1747. A privateer was basically a legal pirate ship which was licensed by the British Government to attack enemy…
The Great Storm of 14th November 1875.
On the morning of Sunday 14th November 1875 the good people of Seaford braved stormy weather to attend church. The town was already on alert as high tide was expected at midday and, although seawalls had been built, the area of land between the sea and the town, (the Beamlands), regularly flooded during the winter…
Caring for the troops
During the Great War, Seaford became a garrison town and thousands of men trained there before experiencing the horrors of the Front. A tented camp in 1914, soon expanded into two huge hutted camps filled with soldiers from across the country and indeed the world. At 25,000, the population of the camps was many times larger…
The Flying Martello Tower
In 1860 a Mr Anderson published a paper suggesting that guns could be mounted on railway carriages to give them better mobility. Guns on trains may seem to be a good idea, but there is a big problem with recoil which means the size of gun needs to be restricted, especially if it is fired…
The Battle of The Buckle 1545
On 18thJuly 1545, a French fleet led by the High Admiral Claude d’Annabant attacked the south coast of England. He was rather miffed that the English had just captured the port of Boulogne and was after revenge. At Portsmouth, Henry VIIIs ship “Mary Rose” had promptly sunk as it tried to engage them. Further down…
Quirky Sussex History by Kevin Gordon 