Hewitt's History Files

All are words culled from just one page of a 19th- century dictionary of Sussex dialect. Not that it makes particular sense, but they would have just told you that they'd seen a wren purusing a fat drunk dove.

But the point is that these are words that few Sussex people would recognise today '“ words seemingly once common in the county.

Words which the Rev W D Parish, vicar of Selmeston (pronounced 'Simpson'), collected and compiled into a volume that has now been dusted off and reprinted.

In between 1875, when it was first published, and now, we've a century and a third that has done huge and irreversible damage to dialect the length and breadth of the country.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette April 30