This website created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

Findon was a rural community in 1825 with some 477 inhabitants. Approximately seventy of these were children attending the village school. I can imagine houses sprawled along the main street, jumbled and leaning together as if about to fall down. Amongst these the Gun Inn would have been a thriving establishment in The Square. High above the village there could have been seen a new windmill grinding grain. The larger affluent houses of the village at this time were Findon Place, Muntham Court, Cissbury and, of course, the Rectory in the main street.

1825 was to be remembered for the blaze, which threatened the Rectory, (now the Findon Manor Hotel). On the 19th March there was an alarming fire in the main street. Out of control, it totally destroyed one of the humble dwellings that went up like a tinderbox in the inferno. The wind was gusting and flames licked around the roof of the house. Sparks and debris blew in the direction of the Rectory and threatened the neat thatched barn and combustible weathered hayricks in the Rectory grounds.

It was a worrying time especially for the Reverend John Hind, watching with anxiety the intensity of the smoke from his windows. Fortunately for him, the blaze was contained and extinguished within a few hours, and not allowed to spread to the Rectory as was originally feared. Only smouldering cinders lay where the burnt cottage had once stood.

Other day to day events in Findon soon took prominent place and the community continued with life.

Unfortunately, before the year was out, Findon and the surrounding villages, were put to a severe test when they were badly hit by a disagreeable epidemic of typhus, (which was often transmitted by lice or fleas). Many inhabitants suffered from the intense headaches and high fever and were to succumb to the infectious disease before the end of 1825.

Continue if you would like to read about Risk of Riots in Findon in the days of the Reverend John Hind.