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Squire of Brede

Tiring, perhaps, of his usual diet of saddle of mutton, haunch of venison and roasted ox, Sir Goddard Oxenbridge, an early 18th. century occupant of Brede Park, decided one day to tickle his jaded palate with an exquisite new sensation; that day one of the village children disappeared.

Apparently the new dish pleased the squire and thereafter children were reported missing from all parts of Sussex. Naturally the servants at Brede Park became aware of their master's nasty eating habits and soon it was common knowledge in the locality; but because Sir Goddard was, outwardly, a pious and God-fearing man of gentle birth, the gentry and clergy discounted the rumours as the wicked gossip of envious peasants. Thus the bereaved parents had little chance of retribution.

So it was left to the actual victims, the children, to counter the threat to their lives. Secretly, all the children of Sussex got together and made a plan. At the entrance to Brede Park they placed a large barrel of mead, then lay in wait for the squire.

Foraying out in search of his supper, Sir Goddard chanced upon the barrel and being partial to a drop of good Sussex mead, he quaffed the lot and collapsed in a stupor in the middle of the bridge outside the park gates.

Immediately the children emerged from the shrubbery, dragging with them a huge wooden saw. The East Sussex children took one end and the West Sussex children the other, and promptly they sawed the squire in half. They do say, over in Brede, that the child-eating ogre's ghost, in the form of a sawn tree trunk, still haunts Brede Park and the nearby Groaning Bridge.