Author: Eddie Westfield

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Local Theft Alert!

I need to make everyone aware that I have been informed there has been a spate of high value thefts in our area this includes high value vehicles, quad bikes, utility vehicles and high value tools (chainsaws, strimmer’s). Last night in the early hours 5 properties in the Blackboys area had items stolen including a range rover. Two men in balaclavas were caught on CCTV. They also appear to be targeting large rural properties. Other thefts have also happened within the Parish in the last two weeks.
This appears to be co-ordinated and organised crime, please be aware and ensure high value items are not on show, and locked away, and please be vigilant in any suspicious behaviour especially around the rural lanes (as this is how they are moving around) and please report to Sussex Police. Make sure CCTV is working and cameras are clear. Do not approach. Try to capture any vehicle details although I am told the gang are using false plates.
Residents may also be interested that our local PCSO Sue Choppin is attending our next Parish Council meeting on 5th December.
If and when I get more updates from Sussex Police I will update the post.
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Alice Catharine Day  1848 – 1930 Dec. Mini Bio

Alice Catharine Day was born in 1848 to William Day (1787 – 1849) and Anne Elliot Le Blanc (1806 – 1896) of Hadlow House in Hadlow Down which was then a part of the parish of Mayfield.  She was baptized in St. Marks Church, Hadlow Down on the 26th. September 1848.  Her father within a year of her being born.
*Please note that throughout this article the writer has purposely used Miss Day’s correct spelling of her name Catharine spelt with an ‘a’ and not with an ‘e’.
Many Hadlow Down villagers know of Miss Day due to the reproduction of her book Glimpses of Life in Rural Sussex During The Last Hundred Years, which was first published in 1927, in the Millenium village book project of 1999.  In one of her ‘glimpses’ she recalls  visiting a village family in 1883, there are other dates of interviews with villagers including one in 1922  In her book she says she is ‘writing principally of my experiences among them [The Wealden People] during the years from 1874 till 1892’, as the book was published in 1927 a few years before her death at the age of 82, when compiling her book she was no doubt drawing on lots of notes made throughout her time living in Hadlow Down as well as her personal recollections as a young lady. Continue reading “Alice Catharine Day  1848 – 1930 Dec. Mini Bio”

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West Hadlow?

Hello all.
According to the 1891 census there was once, and possibly still is, a house in Hadlow Down called ‘West Hadlow’. It could have had a name change in the last 100 years? Presumed to be west of ‘Hadlow’ (Now called Hadlow House) The Village Trust would appreciate any information or leads as to what happened to it.
hadlowdown1@gmail.com
Many thanks to anyone who can help.

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Hadlow Down Book Club Review – November 2023

Black Butterflies Priscilla Morris 2023

‘Have you ever heard of such a thing? A human chain to rescue books, a moment of coming together, of resistance.’

Our book this month has particular poignancy in view of what is happening in the world right now. Priscilla Morris’s novel, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize tells the story of the siege of Sarajevo, based on real-life incidents and experiences from her own family.
Zora Kokovic is an artist and Professor of Art at the University of Sarajevo where she lives with her husband Franjo and cares for her 83-year-old mother. As unrest grows, Franjo and her mother leave to stay with her daughter who lives in England, but Zora decides to stay in her beloved city to finish her painting and join them later. She believes that things will soon settle down and that the tanks gathering in the mountains are for their protection.
Despite difficulties, Zora begins to enjoy her solitude and focus on her recent painting.  But soon things worsen, as conflict turns into full scale war. Buildings are shelled, people lie dead in the streets; food, water and electricity become scarce and then vanish. Zora is reduced to catching pigeons on her windowsill and cooking them. Continue reading “Hadlow Down Book Club Review – November 2023”

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Remembrance Day 2023

 

The Remembrance Day service in St Mark’s is at 3.00 pm. Sunday 12th.  November.
Armistice Observance is the day before on the 11th. in the churchyard. Meet at 10.55 am for 11.00 am Silence.

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Marmaduke Pickthall – Oct. Mini-Bio

Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall   1875 – 1936
Muhammed Marmaduke Pickthall lived in Five Chimneys, Hadlow Down between 1909 and c.1916/17. Electoral Roll records of 1912 show him owning one quarter of the C16 wood framed house now re-fronted with red brick and the central chimney stacks cemented over but finished with brick tops

Pickthall was born in Cambridge Terrace, near Regent’s Park in London on the 7th. April 1875 the elder of the two sons of the Reverend Charles Grayson Pickthall (1822–1881) and his second wife, MaryHale, née O’Brien (1836–1904).  Mary, of the Irish Inchiquin clan, was the widow of William Hale and the daughter of Admiral Donat Henchy O’Brien, who served in the Napoleonic Wars, Charles was an Anglican clergyman, the rector of Chillesford a village near Woodbridge, Suffolk  The Pickthalls traced their ancestry to a knight of William the Conqueror, Sir Roger de Poictu, from whom their surname derives.

Marmaduke was an English Islamic scholar noted for his 1930 English translation of the Qu’ran, (usually anglicized as “Koran” in Pickthall’s era). His translation is one of the most widely known and used in the English-speaking world. A convert from Christianity to Islam, Pickthall was also a novelist, esteemed by D. H. Lawrence, H. G. Wells, and E. M. Forster, as well as journalists, political and religious leaders. He declared his conversion to Islam in dramatic fashion after delivering a talk on ‘Islam and Progress’ on 29 November 1917, to the Muslim Literary Society in Notting Hill, West London. Continue reading “Marmaduke Pickthall – Oct. Mini-Bio”

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St. Mark’s Works of Art

Can anyone cast light on what happened to the beautiful paintings by the notable British Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Fellowes Prynne that were originally part of the High Altar in St. Mark’s Church?
They seem to have been replaced with infill panels of a green patterned wallpaper!
Please email hadlowdown1@gmail.com if you can help with any information as to the whereabouts of these valuable works of art
Edward Fellowes Prynne’s original altar paintings.
Current replacements.