On the first stage of my Four Women and Belloc walk, the stories of Belloc’s missing women seemed almost to tumble out of the hedgerows and land at my feet, asking to be told. So I was curious to see whether that would continue on day two of my Belloc walk, from Old Heathfield to Fletching, via Waldron, Blackboys, Framfield, Uckfield and Piltdown Golf Course.
This time was different. I was searching for pioneering women and female icons, but also for ordinary women who had lived simple but extraordinary lives. But as I walked, there were fewer obvious stories. There were clues, of course, not least the grand houses that hinted at interesting lives lived behind their walls, but the women themselves remained elusive.
It was only when I returned home and began researching that they slowly emerged. As Kate Mosse has observed, uncovering women’s histories is rarely straightforward. Too often they appear in the records only as someone’s wife or daughter, their own achievements overlooked. Piecing together their stories has been challenging, and finding more than fragments may prove almost impossible.
But the closer I looked, the more women I discovered: pioneers, remarkable characters and women defying the times they lived in. And in the end, far from being absent, there seemed to be more women than ever lining my route, cheering me on as I try to bring their stories back to life.
So here then are just a handful of the women I met (figuratively speaking):
Foxhunt Manor and Ann Elizabeth Lucas (née Atkinson)
Foxhunt Manor in Waldron was built by one Joseph Lucas JP at the end of the 19th century (1898/9) and it was unbelievably modern and lavish for its day in its ostentacious Jacobean style. Joseph’s wife was one Ann Lucas who died suddenly in 1904 and following her death, Joseph endowed a village hall in her memory. A 2020 article by the East Hoathly & District Preservation Society describes the building as a village hall and reading room, noting that reading rooms often excluded women, but suggesting that the Lucas Hall’s dual purpose allowed women to benefit from its facilities. There seems to be a clue in that small detail but although Lucas was devastated by the loss of his wife, public documents don’t seem to tell us much more about her.
The ladies of Possingworth Manor
Old Possingworth Manor near Blackboys was built in about 1657 but a replacement Victorian mansion was later built nearby for Louis Huth between 1866 and 1869. The Huths were enthusiastic patrons of the arts and Helen Huth would sit for portraits by great painters for hours at a time.
Just after WWI, Alice Keppel rented the house amid concerns about a scandal surrounding her daughter. Alice was most famously the mistress of King Edward VII and described as an incredible beauty. She met Prince Albert Edward in 1898 when he was 56 and she was 29 and they stayed together until his death in 1910. Alice had two daughters (with her husband) one of whom was Queen Camilla’s grandmother and the other whom was Violet Trefusis. Alice rented Possingworth Manor during 1918–19, over concerns around Violet’s affair with none other than Vita Sackville-West. Of course this was slightly after Belloc’s walk but it is something he must have been aware of.
During the Second World War in London, Trefusis participated in the broadcasting of “La France Libre”, which earned her a Legion d’Honneur; she was also made a Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. In 1964, the manor was acquired by the Mother Mary of Grace and Compassion Benedictine Sisters to serve as their headquarters at which the sisters underwent their religious training and learnt how to care for elderly residents.
Tickerage: Vivian Leigh and Ruth Gipps
As you leave Blackboys and head for Framfield, the Tickerage estate is to your right. Tickerage Mill has a history stretching back to Sussex’s ironworking past, but its most famous resident was undoubtedly Vivien Leigh. The Oscar-winning actress bought the house in 1961 and made it her country retreat, welcoming an extraordinary assortment of famous visitors. She remained there until her death in 1967, and her ashes were scattered on the mill pond.
Ruth Gipps was a child musical prodigy who became an accomplished composer, instrumentalist and conductor. She founded the London Repertoire Orchestra in 1955 and the Chanticleer Orchestra in 1961, championing orchestral music and opportunities for musicians. She lived at Tickerage Castle. Both ladies post date Belloc but I really couldn’t leave them out.
Margaret Scott: The wartime taxi pioneer of Framfield
Born in France in 1882, Margaret Scott had connections with Framfield before moving to Eastbourne in her twenties, where she ran a boarding house in Meads. She discovered a passion for motoring, gaining her driving licence in January 1916 and covering almost 9,000 accident-free miles in her first year.
In 1917, she applied to become a taxi driver, but unlike male applicants, she was required to prove her driving skills. Despite his reservations about women motorists, the examiner was so impressed that he recommended her for a licence. Margaret took to the roads in a bright yellow car nicknamed the Yellow Bird, becoming one of southern England’s earliest female taxi drivers. Within months, she was making journeys as far afield as London, Southampton and Margate, challenging conventions and demonstrating that women were every bit as capable behind the wheel as men.
Fanny Burney and The Maiden’s Head in Uckfield
Frances ‘Fanny’ Burney (1752–1840) was a remarkable novelist, diarist and social commentator whose sharp wit, keen ear for dialogue and extraordinary powers of observation took Georgian London by storm. Largely self-educated, she became a literary sensation with the publication of her first novel, Evelina, in 1778. She went on to spend five years at the court of Queen Charlotte and George III, married a French émigré and found herself stranded in France for ten years during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1811, she underwent a mastectomy to remove a suspected cancerous tumour, without anaesthesia, and subsequently wrote a harrowing, remarkably detailed account of the operation.
She stopped in Uckfield on a journey from Tunbridge Wells to Brighton with Mrs Thrale. Local tradition suggests that she visited the Maiden Head Inn, now closed.
Another of Uckfield’s missing women is Harriet Barnes, a widowed Victorian businesswoman who, with the help of her two daughters, Ellen and Betsy, ran the Maiden’s Head. By 1874, Harriet was apparently managing what was then a family and commercial hotel and posting house, and the 1881 census records her, aged 67, as a hotel keeper and licensed victualler. Her two unmarried daughters, aged 38 and 34, were both employed as assistant hotel keepers, while her granddaughter and two young servants also lived on the premises. Harriet was still listed as running the hotel in 1888.
Charlotte Thornton, JP, AKA Lady Thornton
Born in 1866, Charlotte Thornton married Robert Lawrence Thornton in 1890, but went on to establish herself as a respected community figure in her own right. Following the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919, she became one of Britain’s first female magistrates, sitting at Uckfield Petty Sessions. She was particularly concerned with the welfare of children and vulnerable families, advocating rehabilitation rather than punishment for young offenders. She also supported local charitable initiatives, helping families struggling with poverty in the Framfield and Uckfield area.
Emma Lee French – The Uckfield frontier nurse
Born in Uckfield in 1836, Emma Lee French led a life that reads like an adventure novel. After converting to Mormonism, she emigrated to America in 1856, pushing a handcart some 1,400 miles to Salt Lake City and nursing fellow travellers along the way. She married John Doyle Lee, a polygamist later executed for his involvement in the notorious Mountain Meadows massacre, and she helped run a remote ferry crossing on the Colorado River.
Following her husband’s death, Emma remarried and became a much-loved nurse and midwife in Arizona, treating everyone from railway workers to Native American families. Although she had no medical degree, she became affectionately known as Doctor Grandma French. When she died in 1897, railway trains reportedly stopped in tribute. Quite an extraordinary journey for a woman born in a small Sussex town.
Golf and Lady Margaret Hamilton-Russell
Lady Margaret Hamilton-Russell was one of the pioneers of women’s golf. Born into an aristocratic family, she was the daughter of the 3rd Earl of Eldon and learned to play on the family course at Stowell Park. In 1893, aged just 19, she won the inaugural British Ladies’ Amateur Championship, defeating Issette Pearson, a founder of the Ladies’ Golf Union. She went on to win the championship again in 1894 and 1895, becoming the first woman to claim three consecutive titles and helping establish women’s golf as a competitive sport. In 1907, joined Piltdown Golf Club.
Lady Muriel Hay
Lady Muriel Hay is associated with the early history of Piltdown Golf Club too, although her precise role in its founding needs further research but it is beleived that, as a keen player, it was she who encouraged her husband to have the course built.
Agnes Mowser: The Fletching Witch
In 1591, Agnes Mowser of Fletching found herself accused of witchcraft after a local woman, Anne Clemans, suffered a mysterious and prolonged illness. Agnes was charged at the Sussex Assizes with having bewitched Anne, who, according to the records, “languished but did not die”.
At a time when witchcraft accusations could lead to execution, Agnes escaped with a sentence of one year’s imprisonment, together with the humiliation of standing in the public pillory. What became of her afterwards is unknown, but her story lives on in local folklore.
A word about photos
You may notice there are no portraits of the women featured in this article. For some, no photographs or images appear to exist; for others, the available images come with hefty reproduction fees. That irked me somewhat. I wanted to celebrate all these women equally, rather than give prominence only to those whose portraits I could afford to reproduce. And I rather resent the idea of paying large organisations for the privilege of bringing their stories back into the light. So, for now, it’s all of them or none of them. I’ll keep searching, and perhaps one day I’ll find a way to give each of these remarkable women a face to go with her story.
Apart from knowing more about these women, what I’d also like to know is something more about the every day women who lived in this part of the world. Who were they and what are their stories?
For more of Belloc’s missing women visit:
The Missing Women of Belloc’s Sussex: Robertsbridge to Heathfield
