It still retains the huge open fireplace in front of which a vestry meeting was held in 1820 to which poor parents of children of 11 years of age or more were summoned to order the putting out of such children to service.’ There’s a benevolent ghost who replaces blazing logs if they fall out…

“The village by the water where the willow trees grow.” A lyrical name for a lovely place, described by the writer E.V. Lucas as the Jewel of Sussex. Farmer Edward Frisby Howis certainly loved the place so much that he stated in his will that he should have a spy hole in his grave to…

Weatherboard cottages and a much-restored church on the road east of Battle where some residents are prepared to take major steps to maintain the serenity of the place. Villagers went to the courts in 1984 to try and stop motorcycle scramble racing in the village. Noise levels were measured and the Grass Enduro Scramble Trial…

The census of 1871 shows that there were 40 houses in Westmeston, 136 men and boys, 107 women and girls. The Downland hamlet is not much bigger today, but it has certainly got more than its fair share of ghosts. Black Dog Hill takes its name from a particularly unnerving phantom, a headless black dog…

The village lies, literally, in the shadow of Pevensey Castle, but Westham has its own identity and is anxious to preserve it. When it was proposed to combine the village with Pevensey to make one parish named Anderida the message from the packed public meeting was a firm ‘Hands off.’ The church was built soon…

Dark deeds and a mystery on Bonfire Night. Westfield’s last windmill went up in flames on 5 November 1908, on the evening when the village’s bonfire society was making its annual torchlight procession around the large houses of the village. The finger of suspicion pointed naturally enough to the Bonfire Boys and they were openly…

The Lamplands and the Taperlands have long disappeared from this delightful conservation village tucked away in a corner of Friston Forest. They were fields, the rents from which went to the church to pay for oil to keep a lamp burning above the altar, and to buy tapers or candles for the building. At West…

Stories travel round villages at great speed and they sometimes get twisted in the telling. The Legend of the Black Rat caused some alarm in Wartling with grim rumours that the deadly plague had returned to the village 300 years after it claimed so many victims here. Mr Kemevs Bagnall-Oakeley had to allay the fears…

The War-bil-in-Tun is the name of the pub. Is it an appalling pun on the name of the village or, as the story goes, a name provided by an historical event? They say an impatient soldier came this way centuries ago and in his greed for beer when he arrived at the ale house chopped…

A formidable lady believed to be more than 300 years old is still going strong today. She used to reside at Wannock’s ancient watermill, powered by one of several streams rising in the chalk hills above the village, but since the mill’s demolition has moved to more suburban surroundings. The lady in question is a…