August 2019 The Gun at Gun Hill
U3A Historic Inns Group: Visit to The Gun Inn, Gun Hill Friday August 30th 2019.
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This second visit of our season takes us into the Sussex Weald, and as might be expected with a name like “The Gun at Gun Hill”, our inn has some connection with the Wealden iron industry and the manufacture of artillery cannons for the British navy. However, the connection is rather weak as little could be found in researching the hamlet of Gun Hill or the Inn itself. The best I could establish was that the Inn building was believed to be a powder store at the time of cannon manufacture in the area (most recently 16th-17th centuries). There was however a well-documented furnace and forge nearby in Chiddingly at Stream Mill (a piece of cannon boring equipment from this site is on display at the Anne of Cleves House Museum in Lewes). Locally there is another reference to this activity with Gun Farm.
Architecturally the Inn, timber-framed with brick infill, dates to the Elizabethan-Tudor period and it is quite feasible that it might have been used later as a powder store. Although much iron smelting went on throughout the Weald, only in selected areas, including Chiddingly and Gun Hill, were cast iron cannons produced.
The Inn records that the building was used as a courthouse in 1852 for the Onion Pie Murder trial. Sarah Ann French was found guilty of wilfully murdering her husband, William French, by poisoning his onion pie with arsenic. She had her sights on a new husband but instead French was hanged for her crime at the HM Prison Lewes in front of approximately 4,000 people on 10 April 1852. If there is onion pie on today’s menu, I might suggest avoiding it!
Trevor Devon, August 2019.