Unfortunate surnames

eHow published a list of the most unfortunate surnames which set me to thinking who were the most unfortunately named people in Sussex.

    

A Mary Horney was baptised in 1662 in Broadwater, the daughter of William and Elizabeth Horney whilst Icklesham was the burial place for an Abraham Cundick in 1759.

     

There are a fair number of Pricketts in Sussex including Effie Beech Prickett, daughter of Theophilus Prickett, who was baptised in 1888 in Wartling.  She was probably quite glad to marry Robert Widdicombe in 1912.

    

I wonder if Mary Ann Spearshott ever regretted her marriage in 1840 to William Titt. The family later emigrated to America where their grandson Charles took the step of changing his surname to Tea.

   

The parish of Findon must have been relieved when a slut was saved by a priest when in 1623  Frances Slutt married Richard Preist.

 

Of eHow's list of less than fortunate surnames I can find some examples in Sussex; there was Benjamin Bottom whose son John was baptised in Frant in 1848, then there was Dick Balls born in 1815 in Hastings whilst the excellently named Kingsley Bryce Speakerman Smellie was baptised in Eastbourne in 1898.  

I have not been able to find any Cockermouth's in Sussex but there was an Ann Cock baptised in Chichester in 1742 and an Elizabeth Cocklet baptised in Kirdford in 1592.  David and Jane Boggs daughter Mary was baptised in 1825 in Midhurst and there are quite a few members of the Willy family from Stephen Willy baptised in 1613 in Hooe to Joseph Willy baptised in Eastbourne in 1892.

There were the Sick sisters from Middlesex who attended school in Hove in 1871 and there was Robert Nipple and his wife who were in Brighton workhouse when their son Henry was baptised in 1855.  

Finally my favourite name so far that of Gamaliel Glasscock who was buried in Willingdon in 1629.  Not only does he have one of eHow's unfortunate surnames but he was given the forename of a 1st century expert in Jewish Law!

What is your favourite unfortunate surname?

A Halloween tale

With Halloween fast approaching the time seems right for a spooky tale.

Lewes Castle was built soon after the Norman Conquest by William de Warenne, it is associated with many ghost stories and this is one of the best known.

Many many years ago, probably during the Norman period, the lord of Pevensey Castle took an army to attack the Earl of Warenne at Lewes Castle; the two armies met at Mount Caburn just outside of Lewes where battle began.  But watching from the castle at Lewes was the wife of the Earl of Warenne who was holding their new born baby.  It seemed as if the lord of Pevensey was going to take honours and with his sword raised he moved in for the kill but the Lady de Warenne loved her husband and she prayed to St Nicholas, who protected those in danger, and promised that their son would not marry until he had been to Byzantium and offered up treasure to the tomb of St Mary.  St Nicholas obviously liked this plan and intervened in the battle, Lord Pevensey lost his balance, his sword missed de Warenne and without a wife to offer up their own child on his behalf he was killed and the battle was over.

Lewes castle today

Life went on, each year the de Warenne's celebrated their win over Lord Pevensey and the young baby grew up to be a fine young man.  As young men tend to, he fell in love and was soon going to marry the Lady Edona.  The  two  were dancing at the anniversary of the battle when suddenly, an icy wind swept through the hall and the room was plunged into dark as the candles and lamps were extinguished.  Now the room was lit by images of the battle which were played onto the walls and just as Lord Pevensey again went to strike Earl de Warenne everything was suddenly silent and quiet.

The de Warennes took this as an omen and soon their son found himself on a ship to Byzantium.  One year later, on the 17th May, his ship was spotted off the coast of Worthing and the de Warenne family along with the Lady Edona rushed to meet the returning hero.  They gathered along the coast near the church of St Nicholas in Brighhelmstone singing songs of joy as the ship grew closer.  Suddenly the ship hit rocks near Shoreham and sank almost instantly, it was too much for Lady Edona who dropped dead on the spot.  The Earl of Warenne had a new church built for St Nicholas on the same place were they had stood and Lady Edona was buried when she had fallen.

On the 17th May each year it is said if you stand on the hill next to the church of St Nicholas you too can watch the doomed ship trying to make its way home.

Of course given the change in the coast line and modern commercial development you'll have little chance of seeing anything but doomed shops sinking without a trace in the recession!

An early bonfire night in 1899

The Union workhouse in Westhampnett came to a sad but dramatic end on the 3^rd November 1899.  It was a stormy night with gale force winds raging but all seemed calm when the master of the workhouse, Mr Moore, made his final inspection of the evening.  All 115 inmates were in bed and the staff had retired to their rooms for the night.  An hour or so later the Moores were woken by the sound of a crash and on inspection they found the attics were on fire and the ceiling to the cooks bedroom, which was fortunately unoccupied, had fallen in.  They woke the three nurses who quickly dressed and began removing the inmates including the mother and her newborn child from the lying in ward and a ten year old boy ill with typhoid who was carried out by another inmate.  Many of the inmates were elderly or infirm, they were confused by the chaos and had to be carried or coaxed out of the burning building into the howling gale and torrential rain, the staff were helped by some of the able bodied inmates such as William Waller and Joseph Frampton.  The newly constructed iron staircases at each of the building enabled quick evacuation of the building.

Meanwhile in nearby Chichester there had been a dinner held for the Corporation of St Pancras which included senior members of the fire brigade.  Their evening was interrupted by the arrival of a cab driver who had seen the fire at Westhampnett and driven at speed back to Chichester to raise the alarm.  The firemen, Captain Budden and Lieut. Gambling, commandeered the cab drivers horse and harnessed him to the fire engine, they rang the fire bell and the remainder of the fire brigade arrived promptly and they were soon at the scene of the conflagration.

The workhouse alarm bell was rung but the raging storm limited its effectiveness to such an extent that labourers asleep in neighbouring cottages slept on unaware of the drama until woken by others banging on their doors.  Dr Bostick did hear the alarm but by the time he arrived the inmates had already been removed from the building.  He got the workhouse's own fire engines out but found that the lengths of hose would not connect together rendering them useless.  The fire brigade also faced problems - this time the lack of water.  Although connecting the workhouse to the water mains had been discussed a year earlier it had been decided it was too expensive to undertake the work but it now cost them the workhouse as the water from the well was soon exhausted and little could be done to save the main building.

Westhampnett workhouse after the fire

Once everyone was out there was an attempt made to retrieve as many goods as possible from the ground floor which was still clear of the fire whilst Moore ran back in to turn off the boiler fearing an explosion when the fire reached it.  The fire was allowed to burn itself out which it finally did at 8am the following morning.  All the inmates had been safely removed although one of them, Thomas Gilbert, died shortly afterwards from shock and fright.  Overnight, whilst the fire still burned, inmates were collected by other nearby workhouses and hospitals who offered to rehome them.  It was fortunate that the workhouse, which had a capacity of 569 inmates, had only 115 at the time of the fire and even more fortunate that the fire escapes had been installed as there was little doubt at the time that if they had had to rely on the internal central staircase they would not have been able to get everyone out in time  However if the workhouse had been connected to the mains water supply it might also have been possible to save the building which had originally been Westhampnett Place and had ancient and grand origins before its conversion in 1835 to the workhouse.

Source: The Observer and West Sussex Recorder - November 8th 1899 (page 5)

Apuldram

St Mary the Virgin, Apuldram

Apuldram or Appledram is a small parish with no village.

During the Roman period it was an important harbour providing easy access to Chichester and a bustling village.  However the harbour silted up so a new harbour, Dell Quay, was built but eventually this too silted up and Apuldram lost its main business.  There is little evidence of the medieval village which had grown up around the church and two of the roads which once carried goods and people to Chichester now survive only as footpaths.  Dell Quay is still a harbour but to small pleasure boats and yachts.

The church was built as a chapel of ease for the villagers who were too far from the parent church at Bosham.  The current church dates from the 12th century and until it was built the bodies of those who died in Apuldram would be taken by boat across the harbour to Holy Trinity in Bosham.

The spelling of the village name varies and use of the modern spelling Appledram has been known to upset locals, the Appledram Cider, based at Pump Bottom Farm had vandals repaint the name as Apuldram in 2007.  To be on the safe side the civic records refer the the parish as both Appledram and Apuldram.

From cathedral to chapel

St Wilfrid is a name which crops up a lot in Sussex, with churches, schools, roads and a hospice named for him.  St Wilfrid was a Northumbrian abbot who was made Bishop of York in about AD664; according to some reports he was shipwrecked off the coast of Sussex in about AD666 and narrowly escaped being killed by the none too friendly natives.  Not a great start to his association with the county!  He returned to York but following a dispute with the King Egfrid (Wilfrid had helped Egfrid's wife become a nun) he went back to Sussex where  King Ethelwald of the South Saxon's had already been converted to Christianity and wanted the same for his people.  He gave Wilfrid land at Selsey where he built a cathedral somewhere close to, if not on  the same spot as the current chapel in Church Norton and Wilfrid spent the next five years successfully converting the heathens of Sussex to Christianity.  Of course this is a very simplified account and there is dispute as to whether Wilfrid was the first and/or the only person in Sussex at the time who was preaching and converting to the Christian faith.  However that Wilfrid did establish the centre of Sussex Christianity in Selsey at this time is not in dispute and it remained there until shortly after the Norman Conquest.  His cathedral is long gone (probably as a result of coastal erosion) and the Normans removed the See from Selsey to Chichester in 1075 where they began building the new cathedral.


A new church was built at Church Norton, dedicated to St Peter, to serve the local population but by the nineteenth century it was isolated from its main congregation, the town of Selsey having developed about two miles away.  It was therefore decided to move the church from Church Norton to the centre of Selsey so in 1864 work began removing all but the chancel from Church Norton to Selsey brick by brick.   The new church in Selsey was also dedicated to St Peter. 

St Wilfrid's, Church Norton (2012)

The chancel remained at the original site where it was used as a mortuary chapel for many years.  In 1906 the chapel acquired some fittings from St Martins in Chichester when it was demolished and then in 1917 it was rededicated to St Wilfrid and it became part of the parish of St Peters, Selsey.  Finally in 1990 it was made redundant and it is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust, several services are held there still each year including one of the 12th October - the feast day of St Wilfrid.