Civil War Comes To West Hoathly

Inspired by musket balls lodged in a church door, historian Philip Pavey sets out to solve a 400-year-old mystery.

- Philip Pavey

West Hoathly stands 600ft up on the ridge of the High Weald, the wooded and shady churchyard spreading south from the church and then suddenly dropping down by terraces into a deep valley. At the point where this descent begins there is a seat from which the visitor can admire the view southwards across the weald and towards the South Downs, some 15 miles away.

But there is evidence of a dramatically violent past. In the church, there is a memorial to Anne Tree, who was a Protestant martyr burned to death in nearby East Grinstead in 1556. The graves of two World War II German bomber crew once lay on the southern edge of the churchyard, their aircraft having crash-landed locally. Their remains were at some point repatriated to Germany.

But the biggest mystery dates from the 17th century. The great wooden door of the church has a date in iron studs: MARCH 31 1626. The door also features half-a-dozen semi-globular indentations, roughly about the size of Maltesers. Like the surface of the door around them, they are smoothed and shiny with age. As a child my father told me that they were musket ball holes made by Parliamentarian soldiers in the English Civil War, firing as Royalist soldiers retreated into the church slamming the door behind them. He had been told this by the landlord of the Cat Inn in the village. The present church guide makes no mention of the holes, but a version in 1976 briefly stated they were said to have been made during a local skirmish between Cavaliers and Roundheads. Local people say they know the story but have no idea whether it is true. One villager even said perhaps the holes stemmed from a shotgun wedding where the firearm was actually discharged!