The Quest for England
Short videos and related content
When a tailor sells his old rambling house on Horsham Common he requires one stipulation from the potential buyers. Phillip Mercer collected many ghost stories from his parishioners while he worked in Sussex as a Curate at the beginning of the 19th century. He published these along with other strange and unsettling accounts in a […]
Smuggling was rife in Sussex during the 17th & 18th centuries. Many ordinary folk were in league with the ‘Owlers’, the men who went out at night and brought stuff in from the coast. When a man is flung from the top a cliff things start to go wrong for a Sussex gang. Something has […]
Lime Kilns, chalk hills, beech trees and ancient track-ways make up the landscape of Duncton Hill, a few miles south of Petworth in West Sussex. I am climbing the dizzy heights of this formidable section of the Southdowns to have a brief exploration of the Victorian industrial history and well as a stroll through the […]
I am on a National Trust nature trail. Today I follow the printed route that leads up to Wolstonbury Hill in West Sussex, just north of Pyecombe off the A23 and close to the Jack and Jill Windmills near Clayton. I am seeking ancient beech trees, a dew pond and an iron age hillfort. Are […]
I am on the search for a mystical hound – the black dog that supposedly roams Titnore Lane north of Goring-by-Sea in West Sussex. Back in the 12th and 13th centuries, this canine ethereal spectre is purported to have hunted for babies and small children and eaten them. Is it just a myth? Could such […]
Richard Suggett and I are in Crossbush, West Sussex. We’ve tipped off there have been fairy sightings here and we’d like to spot one for ourselves. An unknown sailor is said to have returned from the Battle of Waterloo. Shell shocked and mentally disturbed he claims to see fairies all around him. Are the two […]