With the passing of Miss Catherine Pullein at the Manor House, Rotherfield, on the 8th of June, village and neighbourhood alike have lost a notable and long familiar figure, to whose memory they will owe permanent gratitude. As one who has known her and Rotherfield for nearly 30 years, I have been asked by some of her friends in the village to write a short appreciation of her life among them. Writing now at a distance I have no detailed data to refer to, and can only set down informal memories of my old friend. To do this for her other friends I count a privilege and a pleasure.

Although she came of a Yorkshire family, Miss Puellin lived nearly half her long life in the Sussex village round which her literary interests and activities centred. Earlier years were spent with an uncle who, at that time, had a considerable property between Boar's Head and Eridge, and in that way her interest in Rotherfield began. For the Manor House, of which she became a life tenant, she had the greatest attachment, although satisfied it represented only the inferior portion of a once larger house. No Lord of the Manor, as she knew, had resided at Rotherfield since Saxon times, but neither was that piece of ground in the past ever granted to tenantry, and in the oldest plans the site was left vacant and marked as 'the lord's desmesne'. She was cousin to the late Mr. Rudyard Kipling and to Mr. Stanley Baldwin, in whose home much of her childhood was spent.

To her History of Rotherfield: the Story of Some Wealden Manors Miss Pullein devoted laborious years of study and research. She had already, in compiling a monograph on the Pullein family, taught herself to decipher the abbreviated law Latin and Norman-French of Mediaeval documents - in itself a rare accomplishment and one which peculiarly fitted her for the task of her later years. To this she added the student's patient skill in gathering material from many sources, and a happy gift of making her pages live. Thus slowly she pieced together the history of a village which, until she evoked its romance, its viccissitudes and its worthies from the past, was generally supposed to have had none. To this end she delved diligently among the old Court Rolls then stored at Eridge Castle and put freely at her service, among ancient church registers, and in wills and rate-books of the past. Rotherfield was one of the first Sussex villages to act its story in pageant form, and that it did so successfully some 13 years ago was largely due to Miss Pullein who, before her own. book was written, skilfully dramatised the most telling scenes from its long history. I shall always be proud to have helped in a production which was cited quite recently to Miss Gwen Lally herself as an example of what village pageantry should be.

Shut in as life had long been for her on account of her fragile health, Miss Pullein was no self-centred recluse. Her interests were varied and her charities generous. Wood carving was a hobby at which she became proficient and classes under an instructor from the Mayfield School of Wood Carving were held at one time at the Manor House. She interested herself actively in the welfare of the United Kingdom Benevolent Association and its pensioners, and was a well-known member of the Sussex Archaelogical Society. Since the publication of her book she had many unknown correspondents - from America particularly - for whom she set to work elucidating relationships and tracing pedigrees for inquirers anxious to establish their connection with Rotherfield families of the past.

A little, fragile Victorian lady, seldom. of late years crossing her own threshold even for the few steps across to the fine old church she loved and knew so well, her kindly interest and consideration attached to her the faithful devotion of her household, and won her affectionate respect from many village friends from whom she loved to hear of farmsteads and fields and changing landmarks she could never hope to see again. To very decide views of her own she added a quality of quiet humour that made all her writings so readable, and often helped her to accept the changing order of things without abiding rancour, if not quite without protest. It was a great disappointment that she was unable to see for herself the church frescoes after Professor Tristram's wonderful bringing back of their fading outlines and colours of a year ago, but that, too, she accepted courageously.

To the older generation Miss Pullein has become so much a Rotherfield background that her passing from the Manor House will leave a disturbing blank, even to those who seldom saw her: by her friends she must be sadly missed. But in her book her industry and talent have left to Rotherfield a lasting legacy that has put it 'on the map,' and will be regarded by students of Sussex history as the last authority and referendum on its subject.

MARY E. WOOD.
Ashley,
Rotherfield.