Promenade runners
THIS photograph, taken about 1911, shows children enjoying themselves on the promenade in Seaford on a lovely hot summer's day.
The picture comes from the Bartlett collection, which belongs to the Sussex Archaeological Society, based in Lewes.
Rouser is reliably informed that the odd building on the left was not a Martello Tower but part of a private house called Telsemaure, owned by the Crook family.
Note the old wooden groynes which in recent years were buried under new beach defences.
Would that they were still there. It can blow pretty fiercely along Seaford Bay.
IT'S amazing what you can pick out of the Internet. Take the history of Brede and its connections with Captain Hook of Peter Pan fame.
The 19th-century owner of Brede Place was Moretown Frewin. His sister, Jenny, became Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Sir Winston.
In 1899, the Frewins let the house to the American writer Stephen Crane and his wife Cora.
An invitation to Brede Place became a must in the literary world and the Cranes entertained the greatest writers of the day. Henry James, Joseph Conrad, H G Wells, A E W Mason, Rudyard Kipling and J M Barrie all stayed there.
It was during one of these visits that J M Barrie first heard the story which, years later, he was to use to help him to create one of the greatest characters of children's literature - Captain Hook.
In the early part of the 19th century, the parson of St George's Church was a certain John Maher. To the good folk of Brede, he seemed a kind and caring man and was much loved in the village; nobody suspected that there was anything amiss.
True, he had a hook in place of his left hand but his story of a coaching accident was so convincing that nobody suspected anything different.
But, far from having lost his hand under the wheel of the Oxford Mail Coach, it had, in fact, been violently removed when the good Mr Maher had been illegally boarding a tobacco clipper in the Caribbean with a view to stealing the ship and its cargo.
Before taking Holy Orders and buying the living of Brede, the Rev Maher had indeed been a pirate.
Maher's eventual downfall came at the hands of a man called Smith who had been Captain Maher's bo'sun during his piratical adventures but the two men had fallen out and Maher gave Smith the slip while ashore on a Caribbean island and had sailed back to England without him.
Smith vowed to find him and gain his revenge.
Having worked his passage back on a merchant ship, Smith set about travelling from port to port to try to find the whereabouts of a sailor with a hook.
One night, talking to seafarers in a tavern in Hastings, Smith came across the story of the parson of Brede with the missing hand. A few discreet questions later, Smith was in no doubt who he really was.
Maher soon found himself confronted in his own church by his worst nightmare.
Smith set out to break Maher by threats and blackmail. Eventually, the unhappy parson was driven insane.
There is no doubt that some years after hearing this story, J.M.Barrie used it in the stories he told the Llewellyn-Davies children and in time, Maher became the demonic Captain Hook and Smith his 'loveable' bo'sun, Smee - who, Barrie tells us at the end of Peter and Wendy, was condemned 'to wander the world searching for his former mentor, Captain Jas. Hook'.
What a story.
MANY Sussex folk were not just anti-Papist.They were also anti-potato.
Arthur Rees writes in his Old Sussex and her Diarists of one 17th century Sussex diarist, the Rev Giles Moore, who, though fond of recording his food requirements, made no mention of potatoes, even though they had been introduced into England more than 60 years before.
And Mr Rees goes on to write: 'The progress of the vegetable in rural districts, and especially Sussex, was slow.
'Even 100 years later it had not been heard of on many parts of the Weald. Local prejudice was strong against its use and was with difficulty overcome.
'According to a writer in the Sussex Archaeological Collections, it was so pronounced that during the elections which took place at Lewes about this period, the potato shared with the Pope the indignation of the people, and "No Popery, No Potatoes'' was the popular cry.'
That takes some believing.
The Rev Giles Moore was a pithy diarist.
He was once noted: 'Thomas Dumbrell came to mee as servant to dwell with mee, with whom I agreed to give after the rate of 5 a yeare.
'On the 22nd Dec, I payed him up to that time 1 8s. That same night I found him sleeping with my mayd Mary and I packed them off.'
Just over a week later, however, the Rev Moore recorded carrying out the marriage of Thomas and Mary free of charge.
One wonders how much influence he exercised in bringing the marriage about.
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Weather for Lewes
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 13 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 23 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: South east
