They came searching for coal a century ago and instead found gypsum, a sulphate of calcium used in the manufacture of cement and plaster. The mines of the British Gypsum Company are a series of catacombs which spread over a wide area under the earth. The entrance, too, is hidden away in the woods. The…

There are two theories about the identity of the ghost at The Sussex Ox, a shadowy figure which has been spotted on the landing of this beautiful old building. One is that it is the spirit of a butcher (the pub was a butcher’s shop until some 80 years ago), the other that it is…

The Devil, a witch and a saint have all played their parts in a colourful past. St Dunstan, who built Mayfield’s first wooden church in AD 960, seems to have been a versatile Sussex saint, becoming Archbishop of Canterbury and also finding time to be a skilled statesman, reformer, musician and metal worker. He had…

Mystery still surrounds the case of Robert Bingham, curate of Maresfield, who was charged with two hanging offences in March 1811. He was accused of sending a letter (misspelt and lacking punctuation) threatening ‘murder, fire and revenge’ to a local farmer and, more bizarrely, with setting fire to and destroying his own home, The Parsonage.…