A Sussex Christmas - Fran Doel - E-Book

A Sussex Christmas E-Book

Fran Doel

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Beschreibung

This absorbing collection of Sussex carols and customs, seasonal recipes and literary tales, plays and pastimes, re-examines the rich heritage of Christmas past from around the county. Stories range from the Anglo-Saxon era to the Second World War, encompassing urban and rural Sussex, and featuring secular and religious celebrations of rich and poor, which is sure to enthrall both long-time residents and newcomers alike. From tales of Brighton Pavilion under snow and old festive recipes to well-known seasonal songs, such as Good King Wenceslas and the traditional Sussex wassail, A Sussex Christmas provides the reader with a seasonal anthology of the county and will be a treat for all.

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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

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Sussex shepherd, 1925. (Garland Collection)

 

 

To the affectionate memory of Geoff’s grandparents,George and Florrie Mitchell, licensees of the Queensbury Arms(The Hole in the Wall), Brighton, around 1924-56,who introduced him to the delights of Sussex ale.

 

 

First published 2025

The History Press97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 3QBwww.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Fran and Geoff Doel, 2025

The right of Fran and Geoff Doel to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 83705 012 3

Typesetting and origination by The History Press.Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books, Padstow, Cornwall.

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CONTENTS

The Authors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

A Sussex Christmas

Bibliography

 

 

 

THE AUTHORS

Fran and Geoff Doel are retired university adult education lecturers in literature, medieval and cultural studies. Geoff is a Sussex man with a literary PhD and Fran has an MA in Medieval Studies. They have published 20 books, many of them for The History Press, and Geoff has appeared on Time Team.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are very grateful for help and inspiration from a large number of Sussex dwellers past and present, in particular to the following individuals: Colin Andrews for use of his published material on Michael Blann; Andrew Barlow, Keeper of the Royal Pavilion; John Bleacher for West Gallery recordings; Janie Bishop for memories of the ice cream cake; Sandra Collins, Assistant Ship Keeper at Hastings Fishermen’s Museum; Rebecca Graham, House Steward, Nymans Garden; June Longly for her memories of the Brighton bombing; Sylvia Peters; Alison McCann, Assistant County Archivist, West Sussex Record Office; Margaret Stankiewicz, Acting Archivist for Lancing College; Peter Thorogood, owner of St Mary’s, Bramber, for permission to use his poem; and Kathy Woollett, Assistant in Charge, Reference Library, Hastings Library.

Our thanks are also due to the very helpful librarians and staff at the following: Brighton Jubilee Library, Chichester Library, Lewes Library, Hastings Library, Tonbridge Library, the East Sussex Record Office, Lewes, and the West Sussex Record Office (in particular Mrs Alison McCann, the Assistant County Archivist), Chichester, the Sussex Archaeological Society and the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

We should also like to thank the West Sussex Record Office for allowing the inclusion of certain illustrations in their possession from the Garland Collection for which they hold the copyright.

With thanks also to the Petworth Society Magazine for permission to use the photograph ‘Wassailing at Duncton in the late nineteenth century’, also used in our book Mumming, Hoodening and Howling: Midwinter Rituals in Sussex, Kent and Surrey.

We should like to thank the Sussex Archaeological Society Library for permission to use material from the K.H. Macdermott manuscripts and the painting on the front cover, and the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library for access to, and use of, the Clive Carey notebooks and John Broadwood’s Old English Songs.

A number of books, listed in the bibliography, have been particularly helpful in directing us to primary sources and illustrations and in background information, for which our thanks to the authors and publishers.

A Christmas display at Coppard’s, No. 53 High Street, Lewes, 1878.

INTRODUCTION

Christmas celebrations in Sussex are rooted in a blend of Germanic paganism and enthusiastic early Christianity. Wassailing was noted in the north of the county in the nineteenth century and the Yule log and apple wassailing survived on the Weald and at the village of Duncton respectively until the early twentieth century. The singing of Christmas carols both succeeded and incorporated the wassail tradition. An interesting example of the blend is The Sussex Wassail song, the tune of which was reused for the famous carol God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. The Christmas evergreens and mistletoe also originally relate to pagan midwinter, solstitial and New Year celebrations which were taken over by emerging Christianity. Feasting is another element of the ancient Yule festivities which has survived into medieval and modern Christian Christmas celebrations. Ashby’s, the Haywards Heath grocer, supplied ice cream cake on Christmas Day just after the Second World War.

No county has a richer tradition of mummers’ plays than Sussex and their survival and revival have also been stronger than elsewhere, with the exception of Kent. It can be confidently asserted that a play was performed somewhere in Sussex in virtually every year of the twentieth century except for wartime. The early death and resurrection formula of these plays could also stem from Germanic paganism, but the subject matter of the texts is essentially medieval, that of crusading Christians against Muslim Turks. The actual texts are later still, probably evolving orally in village productions and we have included the earliest Sussex references to mummers, some of which were first published in our book Mumming, Howling and Hoodening: Midwinter Rituals in Sussex, Kent and Surrey.

Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem Eddi’s Service excellently captures the spirit of the earliest Anglo-Saxon phase of Sussex Christianity, connected with the conversion of parts of Sussex by St Wilfrid. But there was an earlier Celtic missionary, Dicul at Bosham, who was perhaps the first to celebrate the midwinter Christmas in Sussex. The thirteenth-century local saint, Bishop Richard of Chichester, really caught the Sussex imagination with a series of dramatic miracles, such as the proliferation of fish by the old Ouse Bridge at Cliffe in Lewes, and we have included a miraculous Christmas cure at Richard’s tomb in Chichester Cathedral, the most important Sussex pilgrimage site. The Normans built Chichester Cathedral and also a number of fine castles in Sussex, many of which have seasonal traditions and apparitions; the Bramber Castle Christmastide haunting by starving children is the most sombre of these tales. Another Christmas-tide supernatural occurrence relates to the murderers of Archbishop Thomas à Becket, who fled to Malling Manor just after the murder.

Consideration of the poor at Christmas is a Christian practice dramatised in Good King Wenceslas, composed by a Sussex minister, and exemplified in Christmas doles and charities and workhouse dinners. Other institutions, such as Lancing College, Brighton Hospital and Lewes Children’s Homes, also had their own Christmas celebrations. Occupations such as shepherding and fishing had distinctive Christmas traditions. Boxing Day sports ranged from the Boxing Day Hunt to swimming in the sea at Brighton and regular Boxing Day fixtures for the Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club. Geoff, who is Sussex born, recalls playing cricket for Hove Wilbury on Christmas Day in the 1960s (once scoring – for him – a rare fifty on a very soggy wicket with bowlers bowling at half pace!). And skating is recorded at St Andrew’s Garden, Bulverhythe, during the white Christmas of 1870.

Then there are the seasonal disasters, such as the famous Lewes avalanche and the destruction of Eastbourne Pier and Brighton Chain Pier. And the traditional Christmas weather sayings, such as a delightful one recorded from a shepherd’s wife in the West Wittering Women’s Institute: ‘If the ice will bear a duck before Christmas, it won’t bear a goose after’. Sussex is a county rich in collected and surviving folksong and there were a huge number of excellent Christmas songs for us to choose from, both from the well-documented West Gallery tradition and the secular collections.

Such is the wealth of Sussex traditional Christmas material that we have been able to avoid duplication (except in the essential case of Kipling) with Shaun Payne’s excellent earlier Christmas anthology for the county (now out of print). It is because of Shaun’s extensive use of the famous Copper family of Rottingdean, whom we much admire, that we have decided to use other singers and collectors in our anthology to reflect the widespread vitality and quality of Sussex folksong.

In the words of the Revd John Broadwood: ‘May joy come to you and to our wassail’.

Fran and Geoff Doel

April 2005

The River Ouse, Lewes.

GOOD KING WENCESLAS

By John Mason Neale

This loved and frequently sung carol was written by a Victorian Sussex clergyman and hymn writer, John Mason Neale (1818-66), and was just one of a number of new hymns for the winter season he included in his 1853 publication Carols for Christmas-Tide. After a spell as vicar of Crawley, Neale joined the staff as warden of the seventeenth-century almshouse, Sackville College, East Grinstead, in 1846, a post which carried a salary of £28 a year. His charges were thirty ‘poor and aged’ householders and he stayed in the post for twenty years until his death in 1866.

The ‘Victorian-style Christmas’ was still a comparative novelty when this new carol was written. A new interest in the celebration of Christmas had been sparked off with Dickens’ hugely popular story of the miser Scrooge and his conversion at Christmastime. Then came magazine reports of how Victoria celebrated Christmas at Windsor, with illustrations of the German Christmas tree illuminated with candles and hung with baubles This was a Germanic custom and had been introduced into the court by the young Queen’s German consort, Albert; it would soon be adopted by Victoria’s subjects. As the idea of Christmas as a family (as opposed to an important religious) (festival) grew in the popular imagination of Victoria’s England, the first commercial Christmas card was designed and put on the market, but its production was expensive and only when the price fell did it become really popular. The invention of the Christmas cracker followed, and soon became part of the Christmas scene. Middle-class Victorian families also enjoyed gathering round a candlelit piano to sing the specially composed new seasonal hymns, such as Good King Wenceslas.

It is apparent that Neale was a compassionate man. The message inherent in his carol is that the coldest and bleakest time of year can occasion real suffering to the poor, therefore there is a special need for Christian charity at this period.

Neale set the action of Wenceslas’ visit to the poor man appropriately on Boxing Day – St Stephen’s Day – when the ‘poor-boxes’ in Victorian churches everywhere were opened up and money dispensed to the needy, and when traditionally the Victorian bourgeoisie, having already celebrated Christmas with the family, now dispensed tips to tradesmen and sent food to the parish poor. Though famous in his own country, Wenceslas was probably up to that point little known in England. An historical tenth-century ruler, he controlled part of what is now the Czech Republic; his birthplace was in a castle outside Prague. Famous for his charitable works, he was assassinated allegedly because of his attempts to introduce Christianity into the country.

Neale, who was a Latinist and lover of all things gothic, set his new hymn Good King Wenceslas to the tune of a charming thirteenth-century spring carol, ostensibly a dance tune, entitled Tempus ad Floridum (Spring has unwrapped her flowers). Here are the well-loved words; they were intentionally anachronistic:

Good King Wenceslas looked out,

On the Feast of Stephen,

When the snow lay round about,

Deep and crisp and even.

Brightly shone the moon that night,

Though the frost was cruel,

When a poor man came in sight,

Gathering winter fuel.

‘Hither, page, and stand by me,

If thou know’st it, telling,

Yonder peasant, who is he?

Where and what his dwelling?’

‘Sire, he lives a good league hence,

Underneath the mountain,

Right against the forest fence,

By Saint Agnes’ fountain.’

‘Bring me food and bring me wine,

Bring me pine logs hither,

Thou and I will see him dine,

When we bear them thither.’

Page and monarch, forth they went,

Forth they went together,

Through the rude wind’s wild lament,

And the bitter weather.

‘Sire, the night is darker now,

And the wind blows stronger,

Fails my heart, I know not how;

I can go no longer.’

‘Mark my footsteps, good my page,

Tread thou in them boldly,

Thou shalt find the winter’s rage,

Freeze thy blood less coldly.’

In his master’s steps he trod,

Where the snow lay dinted,

Heat was in the very sod,

Which the Saint had printed.

Therefore, Christian men, be sure,

Wealth or rank possessing,

Ye who now will bless the poor,

Shall yourselves find blessing.

Singing round the piano, c. 1870. (Illustration from a Lewes magazine)

A Victorian illustration of Good King Wenceslas.

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS

At Christmastime the great houses, the churches and even the cottages of Sussex were decorated with all kinds of evergreen – holly, ivy, laurels, cypress, box, bay, rosemary and mistletoe – all available and often plentiful at that cold time of year and which in antiquity carried the symbolism of the renewal of the life force. The first literary mention of the Sussex ‘Kissing Bough’ or ‘Kissing Bunch’ – circles of suspended evergreen boughs formed into circles and decorated with candles and red apples, with mistletoe in the centre – appeared in the seventeenth century. The following reference concerns the making of Sussex garlands for a Christmas party in the early part of the twentieth century and comes from a tape recording made by Rebecca Graham, House Steward at Nymans, and taken from a National Trust interview in 2002 with Daphne Dengate, Secretary Companion to Mrs Maud Messel and her daughter, Anne, the Countess of Rosse. The Colonel living at Nymens at the time of the Christmas house party was Lieutenant Colonel Leonard Messel, who employed around twenty staff.

Daphne Dengate: ‘Oh yes, there was one Christmas, they didn’t do it again, when the Colonel asked all his sisters separately and their families to Christmas (at Nymans), and the gardeners were kept busy for weeks beforehand making garlands and they all hung right round the big hall.’

An early account of the decoration of churches in the nineteenth century comes from the pen of the Revd Edward Boys Ellman in his Recollections of a Sussex Parson:

When I was first ordained anything like church decoration was dreaded, the cross or even the candle-sticks on the altar was looked on as Popish. Flowers were considered the same. The only decoration ever indulged in was at Christmas. These decorations consisted of pieces of holly or other evergreens stuck on the tops of high pews, holes being bored in them to hold the branches...

I would add that Christmas was the only season before that I ever knew of any church being decorated. Gradually the other churches around were decorated also.*

About 1870, when church decorations were more thought of, the then Curate of Wilmington, the Rev. Samuel Ward, took great interest in the subject, and visited every church in the neighbourhood that he could, to see the Christmas decorations. He was told that the Arlington decorations were out of the common, so through rather deep snow he went to see them. He found great red flower-pots in each window, with a branch of evergreen stuck in each; nothing else. But he said the church walls were green with damp moss, and plants that had vegetated of their own accord were in the damp window-ledges. In the west window tall nettles were growing.

It was even a few years later that the Rector of West Dean (who then lived at Seaford), going over on a Christmas Day, found what the clerk styled ‘Taxts’ up. The ‘Taxts’ were three in number; what one was I forget. One was ‘A Merry Christmas’, over the altar, and the third consisted of three letters, ‘M.B.P.’.

The Rector puzzled over in his mind during service as to what M.B.P. could mean and thought it must be something about the Virgin Mary. But the clerk explained that it was the initial letters of ‘Mr. Bannister’s Pew’, and had been put up over that seat.

‘The Home Decking to Welcome Christmas.’ (Illustration from a Lewes magazine)

The rest of the decorations consisted of bent willow boughs across the aisle, from which dangled some oranges, which were afterwards to be given to children. The clerk was very proud of his decorations.

A rather less than enthusiastic report about decorating churches at Christmastime comes from the curate of Hamsay in the year 1871. From ‘Parish Jottings’, Lewes Churches Magazine, Vol. VI:

In our small parishes we are not all artists; and there is often amongst us a great gap between what we do and the effect produced. Some of us still live contentedly in the day of small things; and where a church has to be decorated year after year, probably by the same hands, a sort of stereotyped ornamentation is in vogue. Then we have some unhappy churches which all the decorations of Christendom would not enliven – churches with a hideous gallery jutting impertinently out into the body of the church – charity puts a text along its front, wraps it up as decently as it can; high pews, above which one sees a bit of ribbon belonging to somebody’s bonnet, or a few hairs belonging to some male head. A pulpit so high up that any leaves on it would make it look like a holly tree – said pulpit having a sounding board over the preacher’s head, as if the church were six times its size, and that the roof being leaky it required some protection for the preacher. Then, in some country churches, an insane notion of decoration is indulged by those who make little holes in the high pews, and insert pieces of holly into said holes, so that the worshippers on Christmas Day may suppose they are keeping Christmas Day in a young plantation! Then, how wonderfully fonts are decorated! Though many of them in small country parishes have quietly stepped out of observation into some remote corner. A great refuge to decorators is in texts! Great letters formed of holly and ivy leaves straddle across a black wall, and are better than nothing. Then when there are pillars to decorate we take the serpentine method, and wind a wreath round the stony corporation of the shaft – the top we encircle with another wreath. If we have windows we use the invariable moss for the base, and ivy round the sides. In some of our more pretentious churches all sorts of compromises are effected. Sham berries, sham leaves, letters of wool, rice, gold paper, imitation flowers and even imitation moss. There is no doubt about it that a young lady with taste will utilize a few sprigs of ivy and holly in the decoration of any part of a church; whereas another with all the wealth of a greenhouse would, without taste, merely make a flower show of her part of the work. Without design, and consequently without harmony – all decoration is so much maypole-work. Christmas decorators – ‘Let all things be done decently and in order.’

There is more than one Sussex tradition regarding the disposal of greenery used as Christmas decoration. For some Twelfth Night ended with the taking down of all the evergreens and decorations, and to prevent bad luck it was stated that they must be burnt on this day. Others allowed the greenery to stay in situ until Candlemas.

‘Grandpa under the mistletoe’. (Copyright Garland Collection, West Sussex Record Office)

*In the early sixties (i.e. 1860s), amongst my earliest memories, are church decorations, seeing my father mark out texts and devices on white calico, which my mother, the village schoolmistress and my nurse worked over with leaves and flowers under his personal supervision. E.B. Ellman.

CANDLEMAS DAY, 2 FEBRUARY

From the Lewes Churches Magazine, Vol. II, 1868

In the early Church, the ancient festival of Candlemas, which followed forty days after Christmas, marked the closure of the joyous Christmas and Epiphany season. During the Middle Ages it had evolved into a popular church service with a blessing of candles, when clergy and congregation, lighted candles in hand, moved in procession from the chuch to the graveyard outside.

Much later, numerous superstitions came to be associated with Candlemas. As this nineteenth-century Sussex account shows, it had become the day on which Christmas decorations of greenery were taken down and burned. Not to do so was thought to bring bad luck:

There were several curious customs connected with this season, one of which was the removal of the Christmas evergreens, though they might be replaced by the greener box until Easter. It was also the time appointed for the quenching of the Christmas log, and our forefathers must have been sensible of the lengthening days, for the use of candles which had been necessary at the evening services at church, during the dark winter, ceased from this time until Hallowe’en, 31 October. Hence the old saying:

On Candlemas DayThrow candle and candlestick away.

A CHICHESTER CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

‘Of the Cripple cured at St Richard’s Tomb’, from The Life of St Richard of Chichester by Ralph Bocking

As Bishop of Chichester, St Richard was renowned for the attention he paid to his pastoral duties, his concern for the poor and the holiness of his life. Chichester Cathedral was in desperate need of a local saint to encourage visits and donations from pilgrims and even before his death in 1253 it appears that his chaplain, Ralph Bocking, a Dominican friar and university-trained theologian, was collecting stories about miracles concerning the holy bishop. After his death the miracles continued and Ralph gives a selection of these in his The Life of St Richard of Chichester.

The canons of Chichester Cathedral assembled the documentation on the holiness of his life and on the miracles during and subsequent to his lifetime to apply to the pope for canonisation. The pope appointed three learned churchmen and scholars to investigate St Richard’s merits and holiness. Forty witnesses testified to Richard’s humility, nine witnesses testified that he did not care for fine clothes, expensive horses or rich trappings and nineteen testified that he acted with kindness and compassion towards the poor.

In the interim period before canonisation in 1262, Richard’s grave in the north aisle of Chichester Cathedral was treated as a holy site and a chaplain appointed to tend it. In 1276, in a ceremony attended by King Edward I, St Richard was reburied in a silver-gilt shrine covered with jewels behind the high altar. A number of healing miracles occurred at his tomb and shrine. Ralph Bocking’s The Life of St Richard of Chichester was completed in 1270, before the shrine was built, and therefore the tomb miracle outlined below is likely to have occurred at the tomb in the north aisle. The shrine was destroyed during the Reformation in 1538: