The perils of living at the junction of two busy main roads were captured on camera in an attempt to get a pedestrian crossing here. Unfortunately, the maker of the video film which showed the ‘traumatic experience’ for old folk of getting across London Road as the traffic flashed by later taped over the evidence…

The landlord of the Red Lion in the same century was James Blackman, a member of the Groombridge gang of smugglers who took convoys of contraband to Ashdown Forest. Outside the inn were six lime trees to indicate to the free traders’ that this was a safe house. It reputedly has a ghost, but more…

Double weddings can be fraught with problems as two Hooe sisters discovered when they were married to the wrong bridegrooms. The ceremony was conducted in the 1830s by an old vicar who knew the girls but not their young men, and the bridal pairs were wrongly sorted when the service began. Each couple repeated after…

This is the home of the trug, the oval shaped wooden basket that is a Jack-of-all-Trades in the garden and home. Trug making is a traditional craft that has been established in Sussex for at least 200 years but was first brought to the attention of a wider audience by Thomas Smith of Herstmonceux, who…

‘Herrinly, Chidd’nly and Hoadly, Three lies, and all true.’ An old rhyme of which most counties seem to have a version, but a look on the map will show that in this case the three parishes at least adjoin each other. Many of Hellingly’s residents are unaware that they belong to the parish, however, because…

The rules of Hartfield Workhouse in 1821 were enough to inspire a morbid fear of falling on hard times: ‘It is required that every poor person who is supported in this House, either man, woman or child, shall attend Divine Service every Sunday morning and afternoon and on all Prayer Days throughout the year, by…

Walk down the narrow lane that ends at the church, perhaps framed at dusk by the neon glow of Lewes to the south, and it is ajourney straight out of Charlotte Bronte or Charles Dickens at their atmospheric best, with perhaps a shade of Hammer Horror. This mysterious place with its medieval church, complete with…

The hospitality at the big house, principal family seat of the Pelham family from 1595 until 1768, was lavish enough to prompt the diarist Thomas Turner (see East Hoathly) to put pen to paper: “The ale was strong at Halland House, and it flowed as freely there as it did in other old halls, in…

A strange place to find an unusual business, especially one that got the royal seal of approval. The Keston Foreign Bird Farm, proclaimed in 1927 as ‘the only farm of its kind in the world’, was appointed agriculturalists to King George V and the Duke of Bedford. The exotic birds of the world flourished in…