Rottingdean

I can’t think of any Sussex village that has had more artistic residents, political associations and more Baronets and Knights as residents; even the parish church has an identical twin in California.  Once a very poor agricultural village beside the sea it was soon decided there was far more wealth to be gained from smuggling, so much so that the village virtually turned it into a sophisticated profession using the village gentry such as the vicar as a lookout for the excise men; perhaps it was a case of “ Brandy for the Parson – baccy for the Clerk”.

However from the 19th century four sisters and one inventor were to have an enormous influence on this delightful village. They were all daughters of a Wesleyan Preacher by the name of Macdonald. Georgina and Agnes married well – Georgina to Sir Edward Burne Jones the acclaimed painter and designer friend of William Morris. Agnes married Sir Edward Poynter who became President of the Royal Academy and director of the Tate Gallery. The other two, Louisa and Alice married well but also gave birth to outstanding children. Louisa married a wealthy industrialist named Alfred Baldwin; their child became three times Prime Minister; Agnes married a school head by the name of Kipling and their son became the Poet Laureate of Literature and one of our most famous poets. One could say these four girls managed to combine the leadership of Politics, Art and Literature into one family.

They were not the only people of prominence to live in the village; others were to include Lord Carson known as the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and the renowned artist resident Sir William Nicholson.

The village association with America goes deeper than just the copy church mentioned above. The head of Reuters, Sir Edward Jones came to live here with his wife who wrote children’s books under the pseudonym Enid Bagnold. She was to effectively launch the career of Elizabeth Taylor when MGM studios in the USA bought the rights to the book, and then choosing a little English girl, Elizabeth to play the lead in the highly successful film National Velvet.

It seems that the Americans wanted to buy St. Margarets the parish church, and put in an offer to dismantle it and re-erect it in Glendale California. The church authority refused but did give the permission for an exact copy to be built and there it stands till the present day. Almost certainly it was in respect of Kipling and his views, for it is dedicated as “The church of the Recessional” after Kipling’s poem to Queen Victoria and the Empire.

Kipling himself lived in Vermont for a time and it was there that both he and his daughter were to catch pneumonia. Josephine sadly died, after which he returned to Rottingdean.

Some say the village got its name from a Sussex family named Rotyng; the village sat in a Saxon hollow or Dene hence the name Rotyngsdene. Others say the name originated from a man Rota (a Saxon Lord who lived here) hence Rota’s people in the Dene. Whatever the name, people have lived here since Stone Age times and many flint axes and other items have been uncovered.

The site of the village was probably chosen, as it is the only gap in the cliffs between Newhaven and Brighton, a notoriously dangerous part of the coastline in past times. As such it was the safest place to land, and the easiest route to inland Lewes. However this convenience had mixed blessings for the village and was to lead to constant incursions from various invaders from the early Vikings, cut throat marauders and in later times, the French. Evidence of one such raid can be seen in the church.

The church you see today is mainly Norman although the original one was of the Saxon era. Theoriginal tower blew down and a new one built in 1205. Iside it there remain burn stains of a fire that records one of those occasions when the village was invaded and local residents took refuge in the tower. Unfortunately the marauders found them and set fire to the tower floor and most were burnt alive.

The most well known properties of the village are around the road that loops from the High Street following round the walls of Kipling's Gardens past the church and the library museum and down to the High Street.

Three terraced properties opposite the green by Kipling’s gardens probably housed the most famous past residents. Prospect House was where Sir Edward Burne Jones lived with his wife Georgina. She encouraged him to buy two cottages then next door and convert them to one house that he called North End House. The last house was Gothic House and in 1923 the new owner Sir Edward Jones (Reuters) bought the Burns Jones properties and made one house naming the whole, North End House. Plaques on the house today denote the three original properties and display who lived there.

 A little further on is an anomaly in house names as the Court House on the corner has nothing to do with legal matters having at one time been the entrance to Court Farm but now converted to flats. However there is something interesting; the front wall of the house is constructed with mainly “squared flints” meaning each flint has been hand squared so accurately that hardly any cement is used ,an expensive and rare building method.

Mrs Burne Jones “ my beloved aunt Georgina” as Kipling called her was undoubtedly the fieriest of the Macdonald sisters. She was very outspoken and would push her many ideas for the village hard. However her views were not limited to the village and she had no fear of letting people know what she thought. This was exemplified during the BOER war and the Relief of the Siege at Mafekin that had lasted over 200 days. The country and especially the village were rejoicing in the success of the British action. But Georgina thought differently and put a huge banner up on the front of her house stating

"We have killed and also Taken Possession"

Not surprisingly she was called a pro Boer and her nephew, Poet of British Patriotism, must have experienced some angst at the actions of his beloved aunt living  only a few metres away from him. Such was the furore that day there was a near riot in the village.

Rudyard Kipling had bought the largest house on the green and had a wall built around the gardens to protect him from the inquisitiveness of sightseers and to give him some seclusion to concentrate on his writing. One day he was penning a new verse but felt whatever he wrote just wasn’t good enough and kept throwing the scribblings away. An American lady happened to be staying there and through curiosity took some out of the waste paper bin. Having failed to convince him that what he had written was very good and should be published she took it to his beloved aunt Georgina. She agreed, and together they persuaded him to finish it for publication. It is the poem "Recessional" that contains the words that are heard at the Cenotaph every year   “Lest we Forget”.

A humorous snippet by Michael Smith in the Rottingdean Village News tells of the time when two tier horse drawn buses used to ply between the village and Brighton.

People were always eager to get a glimpse of the great poet and if they could get a seat on the upper level, they could see into his garden when passing. The driver on one occasion tried to be extra helpful by driving very close to the garden wall; in the event the bus caught a tree branch and broke it. Mr. Kipling was furious. He wrote to the bus proprietor who was landlord of a local pub demanding an apology; the letter was passed round the bar for clients to read and one offered the landlord half a guinea for the letter. Mr Kipling on receiving no reply wrote again. This time someone in the bar offered a guinea. A totally incensed Mr. Kipling then decided to confront the landlord personally and received this response; “ Why zur, I was hoping as how you’d send a fresh one every day. They pays a deal better than bus driving”. Game set and match I think.

Although there were two landlords running busses to Brighton there was soon to be an alternative method and a much more exciting journey. Sussex inventor Magnus Volk had the idea of a sea voyage on wheels comprising a “boatlike" two- tier tram that could accommodate up to 150 passengers, electrically driven on rails set on the seabed. along the coast to Brighton Chain Pier. The carriage was supported on stilts “legs” 7 metres high that originated the nickname "Daddy Long Legs"; a pier was built  at Rottingdean Gap by the White Horse pub for embarkation. The authorities insisted there would have to be a Captain in attendance because they deemed it to be a sea  voyage albeit that it ran on wheels. The great launch date was set for Novemeber 1896 and was a huge and immediate attraction but disaster awaited;  just seven days later a huge storm destroyed it. 

Anyone other than Magnus  would probably have given up but  in only seven months  it was again in operation carrying 45,000 passengers in its first year. However soon after the turn of the century another disaster struck and this time the venture was wound up. At low tide some of the concrete sleepers can still be seen but nothing remains of the carriage or pier, both having been sold for scrap. Mr Volk’s second railway runs between Palace Pier and the Marina at Brighton to the present day.

To finish this glimpse of Rottingdean there was a small offshoot to the smuggling occupation as a result of the danger to shipping along the coast. Scavenging from the wrecks became highly organised. When a wreck was spotted the White Horse became an auction house where people would come and bid for lots and then collect their purchases from the beach. So rich were the pickings it enticed the villagers to expand their area of operation along the coast into Brighton; unsurprisingly the fishermen there were not best pleased and many clashes took place until in 1600 a settlement was agreed between them whereby, the Rottingdean people would not venture past Black Rock.

There is a lot more about the background of the village history and for those who are interested ,there are many very good guides including

Smugglers’ Village by Henry Blyth and

Rottingdean – The Story of a Village by S.M. Moens

 For fun why not follow The Rottingdene Treasure Trail now ?