We had planned for our June 'Colour Me Beautiful' meeting to be our first face to face meeting in over a year, but because restrictions weren't sufficiently relaxed to allow it, our ever resourceful President Rowena had to find a Zoom speaker at short notice. Fortunately our sister WI group has a lovely lady called Jacqui who stepped into the breach and gave us a wonderful talk on her house and some of the dubious occupants who called it home!
Jacqui has lived at Corsletts Farm for 15 years, it is one of the oldest properties in Broadbridge Heath with parts of it dating back to the 14th Century. Back then it was thought to be one of the farm buildings surrounded by farmland... now of course it is surrounded by our village and the 1960's housing estate, where one of the main roads through the estate called Corsletts Avenue is named after the farmland that it was built on. I'm reliably informed that the 1960's properties were all built with foundations and all mod cons, whereas Jacqui's house was built straight onto a layer of sand on top of the Sussex clay soil... as it's been standing for the best part of 700 years it doesn't look like it will be falling down anytime soon but it's lack of stable foundations can cause a certain amount of movement meaning sometimes the doors will stick or just won't open, beams make loud cracking noises and things really do go bump in the night! Including the worrying occasion when Jacqui's bed started vibrating! Jacqui and her husband put it down to an earth tremor, having experienced them in California, but it was never really explained until she read that in the spiritual world a vibrating bed can indicate that a child may have died in that room. Given that this is such an old house this would be entirely possible and may also explain why the 'blue room' which is situated over the boiler room, is centrally heated, double glazed and has been additionally insulated and should be very warm, is actually remarkably colder than the rest of the house. In the spiritual world an unnatural chill in a room is another indication that there may be a ghostly resident. However, despite the odd goings on in her house Jacqui has never felt scared or uncomfortable, quite the opposite, she loves her house and feels extremely safe and cosy there and we don't blame her!
Some of the former residents of Corsletts Farm, namely Ann Whale and Sarah Pledge were nowhere near as lovely as the current resident. These two were burnt at the stake and hanged respectively on The Ducky... their crimes? MURDER! And this is the tale: Ann was of slightly looser morals than her family would have liked, hanging out with unsavoury gentlemen at drinking establishments in the area... To to bring her in line Ann's parents quickly married her off to James Whale, whom they hoped would be a stabling influence. Ann was quite a catch as she had been left a substantial amount of money and in those times the law dictated that when she reached the age of 21 all of her assets would become the property of her husband. Sarah Pledge, thought to be a cousin of Ann knew this and was quite keen to get her hands on as much of Ann's money as possible. So Sarah invited her, James and their baby daughter to come and live at Corsletts Farm with her. All went well with the two women becoming good friends, however, after a falling out between the two women, James banned Sarah from their rooms in the house. This didn't go down well however, as the women made up and decided to do away with James and along with him his rules to keep them apart. First of all they collected spiders, stewed them and added them to James' beer, when this only made him sick Sarah went to buy poison which Ann then put into her husband's favourite meal of a pudding made of onions. This worked much better than the spiders and poor James met his untimely end as the women had planned. Sarah had told the apothecary that she needed the poison for rats up at Corsletts Farm, but some time later when the apothecary was having a drink with the farmer, he asked about the rats... of which there were none! They put two and two together and the women were arrested for James' murder... As you know, they didn't get away with it and when Ann was burned at the stake, her screams could be heard as far away as Warnham, and it is said that her screams can still be heard to this day...
Jacqui has had an archaeological dig in the garden earthing up pottery fragments and clay pipes, but one find dated back to the 12th Century proving either that there has been a dwelling on this plot since then or that this piece of china had been brought to the house at a later date... we prefer the first explanation!
Jacqui then delighted us by inviting us all for a visit to her property and tea in her garden (when restrictions and the weather allows) which I cannot wait for! The house and garden are both beautiful and it will be exciting to see first hand everything we have learned about the property... and just where they found those spiders!
Our next meeting on Tuesday July 27th will be our postponed meeting "Colour Me Beautiful' we hope to be able to meet in person at St. John's Church hall at 8pm but please check your email and the Facebook page for any changes.
If you are not a member but would like to come along to this meeting and see what we are all about please email our President Rowena for details at bbhwi1951@gmail.com your first meeting is free!
Comments