Brightling Property For Sale and Rent
BRIGHTLING stands on a hill with a commanding
view over some of the most heavily wooded land in the county. A
handful of old houses cluster around a school and the Parish
Church of St Thomas a Becket.
Brightling History & Information
This was built in Norman times, on the site of
an earlier Anglo-Saxon church, and preserves a Norman doorway
and part of the walls of that period.
It contains 13th-cent.
glass in an Early English window, a 14th-cent. chapel of St
Nicholas, and some interesting medieval tombs. Well remembered here is that eccentric M.P. of the late 18th and early 19th
cents., Squire Jack Fuller, and many of the monuments he erected remain.
Brightling Needle, a great stone obelisk, stands on the highest point in the
district (657 ft) and commands a magnificent view. Sugar Loaf is an odd building
near Wood's Corner.
The story goes that Fuller stated he could see the spire of Dallington Church from his
grounds. A friend realized this was impossible and wagered that he could not. So
Fuller had the Sugar Loaf built, with a spire to resemble that of Dallington
Church, and which could be seen from his park. The story does not relate if he
won the bet. In the grounds of Brightling Park, surrounded by trees, is a domed building
which Fuller erected as his private observatory, astronomy being one of his
hobbies.
It is now a private home. His tomb in the churchyard is marked, in the
same grandiose Fuller manner, by a 60-ft high pyramid.
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