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The Fair Folk

The fairies, it is said, used to dwell in the area, just to the north-east of Alfriston is a place called Burlow (or Burlough) Castle, a natural feature on the edge of the Downs above the River Cuckmere. The top has been ploughed until nearly flat and a Paleolithic handaxe was found in the 19th century. A theory suggests the area was also used as a medieval fort though the area is now little more than a steep banked hillock topped by a meadow. There is an old story about two men who were ploughing the area and heard a fairy from below ground who said he had been baking and had broken his peel. One of the men mended it and was later rewarded with some fairy beer, but the other maintained there was no such thing as fairies and wasted away. He died exactly a year later. There is very little written about the fort though there are a few accounts of some stones from the original castle atop the mound. Thomas Geering in "Our Sussex Parish" says that the last of the stones were taken for road making by man called William Hills. Perhaps the fortification is Saxon as "Burlow" is a Saxon term for a defended place. The other earthwork just to the south is called "The Rookery", a name more to do with the current residents of the earthwork rather than it's original function as a possible Norman motte and bailey, though there was allegedly a 14th century chapel on the site.

Earth Mysteries - Standing Stones

A rarity for Sussex, Alfriston seems to have been the site of some Standing stones. Nothing too massive as you would find in Wiltshire, but significant because the stones are not native to the area, probably coming from the area around Brighton where many such stones appear naturally. Few of the stones survive today and little is known about them. Some seem to have been used for building, such as with Lullington Church mentioned above and a stone in a wall near the Clergy House. Others stood and some still stand about the village such as one at a place called "The Spots" by the River Cuckmere, thought to be the original resting place of several of the stones. One now gone, outside Deans Place, the site of the haunting mentioned above, one buried in the road by the lane to the church, three covered by undergrowth on the inside of the south wall of the circular churchyard, another three nearby on the Tye, One very large one built into a wall near the junction of West Street and Sloe Lane, one as part of the kerb outside Badgers in North Street and two small ones helping to prop up the lion outside the Star Inn. The placement of both Alfriston church on a mound and Lullington Church in the middle of nowhere in what people believe to be an old Druids Grove, suggest some form of pagan worship in antiquity, perhaps stone worship was part of that.