Yew trees are a standard feature in all old country churchyards, but here is the oldest in the county, 40ft in circumference at the last count and so cracked with age that a grown man can climb inside. Testaments to its age range from 1,000 to 3,000 years. Certainly it must have been flourishing when…

The last working windmill in the county is the big eye-catcher, though its dominance high on the ridge has a rival in the new BBC television mast. The New Mill (Cross-in-Hand’s old mill went out of action in 1903) has had a colourful past. It was built at Mount Ephraim in Framfield and moved to…

Word games and puzzles here. Coney’ is an old Sussex word for a rabbit so it does not take a lot of stretching to turn the grand mansion of Conyboro into Rabbit Burrow; and Shelley’s Folly is the name of an 18th century mansion of Flemish bond brick. But did it not refer to the…

This scattered hamlet on the margins of Ashdown Forest has more than one claim to fame. It has one of the most modern churches in rural Sussex – not that you’d know it. Holy Trinity church was completed in 1913 but is Early English in style. Prior to that villagers worshipped at Hartfield or at…

A village which in its own humble way was said to resemble Rome, because the parish rests upon seven hills: Stone Hill, Gun Hill, Thunders Hill, Burgh Hill, Holmes Hill, Scrapers Hill and Pick Hill. There was nothing humble about the Jefferay family, the old lords of the manor, whose pride was a byword. To…

Life was not easy for the people who lived in the ‘Charnton’ of feudal times. The lord of the manor did more than keep them in check – they were more or less imprisoned. He allowed none to pass the parish boundary without payment of a toll. Still, it worked both ways and discouraged visits…

This village underwent the sort of trauma that could so easily have shattered its identity. In the early years of the 19th century it abandoned its roots and moved to a new site half a mile away, leaving only its church in the middle of a private park. The ancient settlement of Bloc Stede (Place…

This village underwent the sort of trauma that could so easily have shattered its identity. In the early years of the 19th century it abandoned its roots and moved to a new site half a mile away, leaving only its church in the middle of a private park. The ancient settlement of Bloc Stede (Place…