Battlefields of Fletching

It is well known that one of Fletching’s walk-on parts in history is that this is the village where Simon de Montfort and his rebel army camped the night before the battle of Lewes in 1264. But has anyone noticed the distinctly martial air that hangs over our entire high street? Specifically, the surprising proportion of houses named after famous (or notorious) military engagements of past centuries. I wonder what it says about us and our forebears.

The first one you come across as you walk North is Culloden, on the right. Culloden is of course the bleak moor outside Inverness where the English Duke of Cumberland massacred the Highland army, as they charged directly into his heavy artillery in 1746, effectively ending the Jacobite uprising and securing the Hanoverian throne. Not a name that any Scot reads with pleasure.

Continue your walk and you reach Minden. Generally forgotten now, the Battle of Minden, near a fortress town South of Hanover, was seen at the time as a great British victory in 1759, when an Anglo-Prussian army sent an advancing French force reeling back and ending its attempt to capture that part of Germany. It was in fact one of the main reasons the French abandoned plans to invade Britain that year – they had already begun amassing a fleet of troop ships at Le Havre. If history had been different we could have well have had French bluecoats advancing up Fletching High Street soon after.

And on it goes. Next door there are Naseby Cottages. Naseby was the decisive battle towards the end of the English Civil War in 1645, when Cromwell’s New Model Army crushed the Royalists and left their cause without any real remaining hope. Sussex was a Parliamentarian stronghold for much of the Civil War, from the time the King’s troops were routed at the Battle of Muster Green, near Haywards Heath, in 1642. So Naseby would have no doubt been a cause for great celebration up and down our village.

It is interesting that both Minden and Naseby were built long, long after these actual battles took place, when they were history to their builders and first inhabitants.

A little further on and opposite you come across the lovely Cawnpore Cottages. The name may sound picturesque, but Cawnpore was in fact the epicentre of the Indian Mutiny in 1859, where a group of 120 English women and children were massacred by rebel Sepoy forces as the East India Company army approached. The incident became a rallying cry for the rest of the campaign as the uprising was put down. Why anyone would choose to name a house after such a dark episode is a mystery.

Finally, head up the road towards Splaynes Green and you reach Fermoys. Fermoys was a garrison town for the British Army in Ireland and was the scene of one of the first attacks by the IRA against British soldiers in the early part of last century. Not a full-scale battle but certainly another piece of Britain’s military past.

So at least five houses or sets of cottages in Fletching have a martial aspect. If you know of any others, please tell me.

But if all this talk of battles wears you down then perhaps cross over to Down Street and admire the lovely Pax Cottage – pax being the Latin for peace.

Neil Bennett