Horsham

St Leonard’s forest near Horsham is steeped in folklore. The traditional story tells of a Frankish nobleman called St Leonard who travelled to Horsham to live. He was born circa 485AD and was thought to have died at the age of 74 in 559AD. He was baptised at the court of King Clovis in 489AD by St Remigius, Bishop of Rheims. Once he was baptised, he chose a life of religion. Once in Horsham, he prayed for the safe delivery of Clovis’ child and it was granted. As a reward for his religious work, St Leonard was given as much land as he could ride round on a donkey in a day. He chose the forest and so it was named after him. He established a monastery on the land at Noblac near Limoges and became its abbot. Once he was an old man he chose to live his life as a hermit in the forest. This is when events would have it that he would become a legend. The last dragon in England landed in the forest and came upon St Leonard. The old man fought with the dragon until it lay slain on the ground, ending the existence of dragons in England. During the battle, St Leonard was injured. Where his blood touched the ground Lilies of the Valley sprang to life. These still grow even now in an area of the forest known as The Lily Beds. As a reward for defeating the dragon, St Leonard asked for snakes to be banished from the forest and for the nightingales to be silenced so they would no longer interrupt his prayers.

Worthing

There is an oak that stands near Broadwater Green called The Midsummer Tree. It is said to be around 300 years old. The legend of the tree was first recorded in 1868 by folklorist Charlotte Latham. The legend said that on Midsummer’s Eve skeletons would rise from the tree and dance around it until dawn. With the rising of the sun, they would sink back into the ground. This belief died out in the 19^th Century.

Folklore surrounded the bottomless ponds called knuckerholes. It was said that monsters called knuckers, dragon-like creatures that fed on local livestock and villagers, lived in these ponds. Their wings were too small to allow them to fly and they were usually brown-red or blue-green in colour. There are various stories of the knuckers being slain. One tells of a local farmer boy tricking a knucker into eating a poisoned pie. He lured the knucker out by placing the pie on a cart led by a horse. The knucker ate the whole lot up and subsequently died. The boy then returned to where the knucker lay and cut off its head to be sure it would not rise again. There were several knuckerholes in Sussex. One such pond was in Worthing by Ham Bridge.

Another legend speaks of a tunnel that went on for miles underground from the now-demolished medieval Offington Hall to the Neolithic flint mine and Iron Age hill fort at Cissbury. The tunnel had been sealed so that no one could get down it. The owner of Offington Hall has hidden treasure at the far end of the tunnel and offered half of it to anyone who could clear the passage and retrieve it. Many people tried to get through the underground pass by digging away at the earth, but they were all driven back by large snakes that sprang at them angrily, hissing and snapping their jaws. No one ever managed to find the treasure.

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