Why not join us at one of our regular drop-in sessions held 2.00 - 5.00 pm every second Wednesday of the month at the White Horse in West Street.  Please contact us to let us know you are coming and what your interest is!

Join us for two new talks ...

Friday, 28 February, 2.00 pm at Westmeston Village Hall.

'Milking to Munitions - the World War II Diary of George Thomas’ by Janet Cragg of Ditchling History Project

'With a Spade on the 'Greensand Way, the Roman road and other nearby Roman discoveries from Hassocks to Barcombe Mill’  by David Rudling, Director of the Sussex School of Archaeology and History.

No booking required.

George Thomas was born in 1913 at Spatham Farm, Westmeston where he lived and farmed for most of his life.  He was a well-known local character often seen cycling or pushing his bike invariably wearing wellington boots. For many years Assistant Scout Master, George played in local football and cricket teams and entered the inter-village sports competing in the Beacon chase into his seventies. 

His war time diaries, deposited at Ditchling Museum, have been transcribed and annotated by members of Ditchling History Project.  At the outset of the War George joined the Local Defence Volunteers, soon renamed the Home Guard before being recruited as Patrol Leader of the Ditchling Auxiliary Unit. The Auxiliary Units were a secret resistance network of highly trained volunteers prepared to be Britain's last ditch line of defence operating in a hidden network of cells in underground bases around the UK.  George was one of several local men who were engaged in secret night-time operations, training in sabotage, explosives and close combat with orders to shoot the local policeman in the event of invasion.

George’s diary describes life on the farm - planting crops, rearing animals and the all-important weather - alongside air-raids, home guard duties and films he saw at the cinema in Hassocks.  There are also veiled references to the secret activities of the Auxiliary Unit and the build-up of troops prior to the ill-fate raid on Dieppe.  

You can learn more about George, his farm and his wartime exploits in a talk entitled 'Milking to Munitions - the World War II Diary of George Thomas’ at the local history event at Westmeston Parish Hall, 2 pm on Friday 28th February.  A second talk will be given by Dr David Rudling, Director of the Sussex School of Archaeology and History titled  'With a Spade on the 'Greensand Way, the Roman road and other nearby Roman discoveries from Hassocks to Barcombe Mills.’  This talk will review the evidence for the stretch of the east-west aligned Roman road between Hassocks and Bridge Farm, near Barcombe Mills considering the road itself and the various settlements alongside or close by.

Quick links to our most visited pages ...

“Evidence is always partial.  Facts are not truth, though they are part of it – information is not knowledge.  And history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past.  It’s the record of what’s left on the record.  It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down.  It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it – a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth.  It is no more “the past” than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey.  It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them.  It’s no more than the best we can do, and often it falls short of that.”

Hilary Mantel

 'The Stone Carver's Tale' by Ditchling History Project:

We are delighted to announce that we have been chosen as one of three runners up in the  20sStreets competition run by The National Archive (more ...)

Fond memories of Ditchling Resident, Dame Vera Lynn, 1917 - 2020

Crowning the Fair Queen, 1960

'Ban the Lorries' Protest March, 1973

The Fair Proclamation, 1982

Crowning the Fair Queen, 2000

In the Sussex village of Ditchling we are mourning the loss of our long time resident, Vera Lynn.  She was part of the village from the days when she would push, Virginia, her daughter in her pram to do some shopping in the High Street.  She opened many a village fair and enjoyed sitting in the village barn gardens having tea with everyone else.  Many a time she would be seen walking to the village shops with her husband, holding a wicker basket to collect a loaf of bread. They would stay to have a coffee in one of the coffee shops where she would be greeted as Mrs Lewis which she preferred to Vera Lynn when she was in Ditchling.  Even though we have seen little of her in recent years it was always good to know she was here and we would notice the BBC equipment outside her house when there were wartime anniversaries.  She will long remain a source of pride that she lived in our village for so many years.  More ...  Should you wish to add a memory to our tribute page, please contact us.