The Americans are a rare breed when it comes to souvenirs. Even so, it must have come as a shock to the parochial church council when the Yanks tried to buy St Margaret’s church in the 1940s. Because of the village’s associations with Rudyard Kipling (and the fact that Kipling had an American wife) they…

Mutations in this pretty hilltop village? The women native to these parts were said to be unusually tall which gave rise to the belief that they were endowed with an extra pair of ribs. A formidable female who ended her days here was Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake, who single-handedly opened up the medical profession to women.…

The Mill on the Road is given as one source of the name; far more attractive than the basic ‘Red-Mould’ derived from the reddish tinge of the local ploughlands. Certainly mills and millers have played their part in Rodmell’s past, though there is no mill in the village today – just the memory of its…

The name of the village is twinned with the Great English Game. The Gray-Nicholls factory has been making cricket bats here for more than a century, created from the finest willow grown at both local plantations and those further afield and hand-finished by the craftsmen at the rate of about 150 a day. Some of…

Scores of people remember The Great Omi, but once seen he was not the sort of man you could easily forget. This bizarre character, who claimed to be a member of an elephant worshipping cult, had a face and body that were covered in stripes like a zebra. The former public schoolboy and army officer,…

A place that has expanded so much in recent years that it ranks among the biggest villages in the county. But it is more than just a dormitory at the end of the working day for those that toil at the nearby county town of Lewes. Its people have a strong community spirit and nobody…