It has something of the feel of a frontier town in the Wild West, on a smaller scale of course. Straddling the old turnpike road from East Grinstead to Lewes, its people used to eke out their livings on Ashdown Forest, which still stretches unkempt and sometimes forbidding up to the cottage gardens. It was…

“O rare Norgem! thou dost far exceed Beckly, Peasemarsh, Udimore and Brede.’ A proud little jingle from the old days. The neighbouring villages probably resented the put down, but certainly Northiam has everything expected of a village: rich in old houses and history, with even a parish pump still on the green. The village’s water…

Older people in the village still remember Paraffin Annie, also known as Oily Annie. She used to wheel an old pram around the lanes delivering fuel from door to door. Annie, real name Alice Terry, lived in Manchester Road, Ninfield. An unlikely street name for a place hardly bigger than a hamlet, but there was…

Men of the cloth often have hidden talents but they do not come much more unusual than the late Rev John Baker’s. The rector of Newick was a magician – and a semi-professional one at that. He gave his first public show in 1963 and his repertoire of tricks was enormous with more than 400…

The church and the school were designed by the eccentric Victorian architect S.S. Teulon, and built in the middle of the 19th century by Lady Mary Webster in memory of her late husband Sir Godfrey. She was a woman of high principle who obviously thought a lot of the village and its people for she…