ANECDOTES
ABOUT THE VILLAGE.
John Huntley died at the age or 94 in 1891 having been born in the year 1797.The
following are reminscinces of the village told by him to Miss Helen Foxcroft in
1888
Jack
Jones-the Highwayman
Jack Jones was a highwayman who lived in the times of old Huntley's f'ather. He
had excavated a subterranean hiding place in the Friary Wood. It was only just
possible to crawl through the narrow entrance, but the room itself was as large
as Huntley's kitchen. Huntley said he had been taken to see it as a boy, and that
it was a long time before the authorities discovered it. The walls of the cave
in which Jack Jones lived were hewn out of the rock, and there he lived together
with Ben Fussell, (brother of the af'ore mentioned James Fussell), and his sister
who kept company with Ben Fussell. They had seven or eight children; and the whole
company lived in the hole. Benjamin Fussell was a quiet man and took no part in
the robberies himself'. As quite an old man he worked on the same f'arm as Huntley,
and also worked f'or Mrs. Day at Hinton House, and drove her horses. Fussell used
of'ten to tell Huntley that when Jack Jones had stolen a lot of sheep the place
was like a shambles. Eventually Jones was hanged on Old Down for robbing his own
Uncle of 11 1/2d. on the highway. The woman was transported and wrote to Fussell
to "do something himself' and get sent out there". But Fussell did not see the
point of this. "Hinton folk" said Huntley "were an uncommon rough lot then".