THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com  created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

MANHUNT AT TOLMARE FARM ASSISTED BY BLOODHOUNDS

Copyright Valerie Martin 2006

Published in the Findon News in August 2006

You may think that nothing much occurred in the Findon area in 1934 but there you would be wrong.  A number of things did happen between the wars.   

What then was the village of Findon like in 1934?  

The publican of the Gun Inn in The Square was Ernest Rowley.   It was around this time that the inn became the headquarters for the Findon Cricket Team.   They used one of the rooms upstairs at the public house for meetings.    

At the other end of the High Street, Arthur Gregory Charman appears to have been the owner and proprietor up until this date of the original Black Horse Inn.   

Building work was also going on at the southern end of the High Street.  Four shops (with living accommodation above) were built in 1934 opposite the Black Horse Inn.   These were to accommodate a fishmonger and greengrocer in one shop..... a butcher..... a hairdresser.... and a café.   It was also at this date that Nepcote was a busy place — the Convent was being built for the Anglican Sisters of Mercy from Worthing.    At The Vale, Brian Vick was training racehorses.

Something else of note happened in the springtime of 1934, and this was a manhunt on our local downland.   Police Constable Jex, a Worthing police officer, was shot in cold blood by a young burglar named Hills (I have not established his Christian name yet) near the site of the dew-pond on the Long Furlong Road (A280) at Tolmare Farm in Findon.  

During May 1934 the police were in uproar following one of their number being wounded and pressure was on to find the criminal.  Tension mounted.    Hills hid in our area for four long days and nights and was holed up in the Tolmare Farm area all of this time.   He slept rough in a barn and stole food from various houses, including the Scourfield family at Michelgrove (racing stables at that time).    He broke into Lee Farm one night and clothes and food were stolen.

The year before all of this happened, the ex-Labour Cabinet Minister, Sir Oswald Mosley, had launched his British Union of Fascists and one of the first branches was at nearby Worthing.  The local leader was Captain Bentinck Budd and he gained considerable publicity when he took it upon himself to organise a Fascist search party, to leave no stone unturned, on the downland for the missing fugitive.   This is how a small army of rather disturbing looking Fascist "blackshirts" were to be seen marching over our deserted Downs.  Photographs of them in the press on their hunt for Hills gave the party a certain amount of publicity at the time.
   
A lady by the name of Mrs Sadler was also asked to assist the manhunt and to bring her bloodhounds to the scene.    I am not quite sure if this consisted of just a brace of hounds or, indeed, a pack.  Anyhow, the story goes that the bloodhounds arrived and given the scent, immediately set off on the trail and tracked the criminal to the nearby village of Patching.   What a thrill it must have been for them to actually be called in for a real live manhunt.   

The local residents were too afraid to venture out of their houses at this point as they were all so frightened of coming across the gunman.   

Eventually, the wanted man was run to earth by the bloodhounds early in the morning by armed police in Patching Wood.   Then a cordon of policemen was thrown around Myrtle Grove.   Knowing he was cornered, Hills was in a panic and turned his gun on himself, (the police at the time claimed), and put a bullet through his own head.

A commotion broke out and George Stanford, (the blacksmith at Patching), helped to fetch a nearby gate, which was used as an improvised stretcher, and carried the injured man into Patching Farm barn.   An ambulance was called but the gunman died before medical assistance arrived.

George and his wife Rhoda entertained many of the policemen to breakfast that morning, and it is said that the Patching forge was full of men in uniform eating ......and swigging back tea.

Continue if you would like to read....The Mystery of the Bootmaker's Death.

THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.