Guestling is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

in the

Rother Rother may refer to: General *Rother (surname) (also sometimes spelled Röther) *Rother District, a local government district in East Sussex, England *Rother FM, an independent local radio station for Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England *Rother Kup ...

district of East Sussex, England. The village is located north-east of

Hastings Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...

on the

A259 road The A259 is a road on the south coast of England passing through Hampshire, West Sussex, East Sussex and Kent, and is the longest Zone 2 A road in Great Britain. The main part of the road connects Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Rye and Folke ...

to Rye. Its parish church is dedicated to St Laurence.

History

Guestling, referred to in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

(1086) as ''Gestelinges'', was originally named as a settlement of the family of a man named ''Gyrstel''. The Domesday entry records that the village consisted in 1086 of 21 households, 14 villagers and 7 cottagers. In 1542, Gregory Martin was born in Guestling and went on to do the majority of the translation for the

Douay–Rheims Bible The Douay–Rheims Bible (, ), also known as the Douay–Rheims Version, Rheims–Douai Bible or Douai Bible, and abbreviated as D–R, DRB, and DRV, is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English made by member ...

, the first full official Catholic English Bible translation. In 1896, hand made bricks were first produced in Guestling, which would go on to be used in Royal locations such as Buckingham Palace and

Hampton Court Hampton Court Palace is a Grade I listed royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, southwest and upstream of central London on the River Thames. The building of the palace began in 1514 for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the chie ...

. In June 2017, Brian Bellhouse was trampled to death by a herd of cows in a field at Church Lane, Guestling.

Geography

The village of Guestling is located from the coast, and about north east of

The village is a scattered one, consisting of multiple parts, including ''Guestling Green'' and ''Guestling Thorn''. The hamlet of ''Three Oaks'' also lies within the parish.

Landmarks and culture

The village was probably originally centred around the St Laurence's Church, built in the 11th century: the building has a

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

tower which has been Grade I listed since 1961. However, the villagers moved further away from the church, possibly owing to victims of the Black Death being buried in the churchyard. Also buried in the graveyard was Olive "Nou" Rand Brockwell, nanny of

Christopher Robin Milne Christopher Robin Milne (21 August 1920 – 20 April 1996) was an English author and bookseller and the only child of author A. A. Milne. As a child, he was the basis of the character Christopher Robin in his father's Winnie-the-Pooh stories a ...

. The church was restored in 1886, but was further damaged by a fire in 1890. The village's war memorials are located within the church, with 24 names from the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and 8 from the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. There has been an annual Flower Festival since the 1990s at St Laurence's Church. The school in the village is the Guestling-Bradshaw CE Primary School, which dates back to 1835.

References

{{East Sussex1 Civil parishes in East Sussex Rother District