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The Pharaoh
Squire of Brightling
The Mad Jack Fuller Trail
in Sussex
I first visited the world of the Pharaoh Squire
three years ago as the guest of Roadmark
Travel of Storrington in West Sussex, a super
coach company down on the south coast who
book trips with us each year as part of their
public excursion programme. Mark thought it
would be just my cup of tea. His day took us
from Middle Farm near Lewes via Eastbourne,
Beachy Head and Alfriston right across to
Brightling and Bodiam – a mileage luxury only
afforded by their Sussex start point.
In looking for new tour ideas I set my sights high
- the wow factor for landscape and a subject
that people will find so interesting that they’ll be
jotting down tit bits to share with friends and
family. Last summer, I packed my grip (as they
say in 19th century novels) and took to the open
road in my carriage. Well, in my Nissan Qashqai
to be precise. Those of you whom I’ve known
since the 1980s and 90s will remember the days
when I’d meet your coach on my push bike
which would then go into the coach boot for the
day giving me the joyous freedom to cycle home
from wherever the tour finished.
But (poacher turned gamekeeper) I gave in a
couple of years back and learned to drive.
All that cycling helped - even Hyde Park Corner
on four wheels is a doddle when you are used to
the frankly far more terrifying experience of the
whirling eddy of humanity that is the Lewisham
roundabout on two wheels - a place where no
one is remotely familiar with the Highway Code.
Pottering along safely inside a ton of metal is a
breeze once you know what all the buttons do
and how wide you are!
So tootling along in the still novel world of the
motor car and plotting a course from Rye to
Lewes on a sparkling English summer’s day on
a whim I decided to drive via Brightling
the epicentre of Mad Jack Fuller’s Sussex.
It was every bit as breathtaking as I remembered
and so high above sea level I felt as on the top
of the world. Add the truly remote and
undiscovered feel and I realised that Brightling
was ticking the wow box.
I made a beeline for Brightling church which sits
next to Jack Fuller’s old manor house in a speck
of a village sunk into softly billowing and very,
very green countryside. The vicar I’d met here
on the Roadmark Travel day, a cheerful man
and dead ringer for Dick Emery, has since
retired and the parish awaits a replacement
cleric. What a church that lucky person will find
here and what great stories!
John Fuller was a Georgian squire in the time
of Mad King George III (the mad epithet seems
to have enjoyed a fashionable currency back
then). In tracing Fuller’s story it is striking how
many famous characters pop up – Sir Michael
Faraday, Fanny Burney the diarist and novelist,
Sir Hans Sloane founder of the British Museum,
Sir Frances Chantry the renown sculptor and
the artist JMW Turner. The impression is of a
sparsely populated England where the hoi polloi
doffed their caps to a small and busy elite who
were constantly tripping over each other in
fashionable resorts and salons.
John Fuller, known as Jack, demonstrated an
enjoyment of excess typical of many of his
class in the Georgian age – gorging himself
to an impressive twenty-two stone and drinking
himself silly. Jack Fuller’s boozing brought
humiliation and a disgrace that ended his
parliamentary career. However his departure
from Westminster seemed to herald a turning
point in his life when indulgence and indolence
gave way to patronage and philanthropy.
Large numbers of men were returning,
penniless and jobless from the Napoleonic
wars to a society that believed the devil made
work for idle hands (poor ones at least). With the
horrors of the French Revolution still in vivid
living memory the upper classes had great
cause for concern.
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