Ditchling people have had a lot to put up with down the years. There was the witch who lived out on the Common in a house called Jack o’Spades who held up work on the farms by stopping waggons as they rolled past. Like all witches, she had the power to transform herself into a…

The late Ralph Reader, of Gang Show fame. grew up here and that has meant a singular honour for the local Scout troop who go by the exalted title of the 2nd Denton and South Heighton (Ralph Reader’s Own). The church, the small manor house, a handful of flint cottages and The Flying Fish Inn…

No marauding Danes here, but certainly a hill from which the village enjoys some of the finest views in the county. The name is a corruption of ‘Den’ meaning an enclosure on the forest. There has been a settlement on the old East Grinstead to Lewes turnpike for centuries, but the parish is a modern…

George Wagner, founder of the Penitents’ Home in Brighton, waxed lyrical about the tranquillity of the village when he was curate here in the 1840s. It is still a peaceful backwater, which has not changed much since his day, so it is ironic that it has several close connections with warfare. A roadside cross was…