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The History of Windmill Downs

The BN2 area of Rottingdean is well recorded as a centre of heritage and cultural learning. 3500 years ago our Neolithic ancestors set up a community after discovering local flint for toolmaking. A Benedictine Cluniac Priory was formed in 1077 by William de Warenne and St Margarets Anglican Church dates from 1237 AD. In 1377 French raiders came ashore and burned St Wulfrans Church with the local villagers inside. The Beard family set up the Quakers circa 1650.

The world bare knuckle boxing champion 1857-1860 Tom Sayers lived locally building Brighton Viaduct and fought 60 rounds in 3 hours for £500 on Beacon Hill to win the world title.

Although a small quintessential English village with just 2500 inhabitants Rottingdean has been home to a plethora of celebrities. These have included Sir Edward Burne-Jones, pre-Raphaelite artist and designer, family of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, novelists Wlliam Black, William Nicholson and Angela Thirkell, poet Rudyard Kipling, music hall entertainer GH Elliott, world tennis and table tennis champion Fred Perry, folk singer Bob Copper, playwright Enid Bagnold and husband Sir Roderick Jones head of Reuters and many pirate smugglers who tunnelled contraband from cliff caves into tunnells to the village pubs, aided by Dr Hooker vicar of St Margarets. The worlds oldest man Henry Allingham was at St Dunstans, The Black Horse Pub dates from 1512.

Rottingdean Cricket Club is one of the worlds oldest from 1758, boasting the world record for the greatest number of runs from a ball bowled = 67 on Beacon Hill Hogs Platt.  “It was from here that the legendary biggest hit in the history of cricket was made when a batsman scored 67 off a single shot (all run!). The ball was hit down one slope of the Downs, was retrieved by a fielder who then threw it in so wildly that it disappeared down the other side and it required nearly the whole team throwing in relays, to return it to the wicket keeper.”

In 1896 the village became the terminus of the world’s first electrically driven marine Volks railway called Daddy Long Legs which travelled to Brighton Palace Pier over the sea from Rottingdean for 6 pence each way.

Nevill Road is on the southerly edge of the South Downs National Park as a designated protected area overlooking the Seven Sisters cliffs and English Channel. It sits alongside Rottingdean's signature Windmill known as Smock Mill built in 1802 on Beacon Hill where in 1588 the fire warnings of the Spanish Armada invasion were made. Beacon Hill is an open nature reserve with 45 acres of chalk grassland and includes a Neolithic long barrow burial site. The area is listed in the Domesday Book and was given to the Lord of Lewes after the Norman invasion.

About Windmill Downs, the land and house itself

Originally built in 1922 for Lord William Beauchamp Nevill the Marquess of Abergavenny, and passed onto Lord Richard Plantagenet Nevill the Deputy Lieutenant of Sussex and Marquess of Camden.

Re-built 1990 with 7 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, cavity brick walls, a double garage, conservatory and extension which can be converted into an independent living annex. The first house in Rottingdean from Brighton on a corner plot with uninterrupted views across the English Channel and South Downs over Rottingdean Windmill and Beacon Hill.
     
The Isle of Wight is visible 45 miles distant on a clear day. The Family House Coat of Arms is below and Audrey Hepburn’s first magazine cover photo 1952 Rottingdean Windmill

Transfer of title deed in 1922
Garden of current house

Featuring in TV Show "My Kitchen Rules"

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