(No) Blue Plaque Trail:

'Mad Jack' Fuller

Something a little different this month…
‘Mad Jack’ Fuller didn’t live in Hastings or
St Leonards, and he doesn’t have a blue plaque, but nonetheless he’s a remarkable local character and this feature ties in nicely with our Walk of the Month and with the 250th anniversary celebrations of his birth this September 22nd!

Jack Fuller was 18th Century Squire of the village of Brightling in East Sussex (near Robertsbridge, about 8 miles northwest of Hastings).  A well-connected man from a family of extremely wealthy politically active land-owners and iron-producers, as well as being a Member of Parliament and Captain of the Sussex Yeoman Cavalry Jack was also a notable philanthropist, patron of the arts and sciences, and a founding member of the Royal Institution.

Born in 1757 in Hampshire, he lost his father at the age of four and at the age of 20 his uncle Rose Fuller died leaving him his Sussex estate, Rose Hill (now known as Brightling Park). At 22 years of age Jack was elected to Parliament (first for Southampton and later for Sussex) and he later also took a turn in the office of High Sheriff of Sussex. He is said to have refused a peerage, saying ‘I was born Jack Fuller and so shall I die’. He counted in his social circle many of the most notable persons of his day, including Michael Faraday, Hilaire Belloc, J M W Turner (from whom he commissioned a number of paintings), and the landscape gardeners ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton.

Jack Fuller appears to have been a larger-than-life character in every way; fond of cards and gambling, good food and wine he is said to have weighed 22 stone and revelled in his reputation as an eccentric, earning himself the nickname ‘Mad Jack’. Today he is still remembered, primarily for the legacy of his ‘follies’ (useless or frivolous buildings and other

structures) which he had built around the village of Brightling – reputedly for a variety of reasons ranging from drunken wagers to inexplicable whims. These include an observatory, a tower, an obelisk, a temple, a fake church spire (‘the sugarloaf’) and most famously ‘the tomb’ – the stone pyramid in Brightling’s churchyard in which he is buried. These still stand today and attract many visitors each year - you can see three of them on the route of our Walk of the Month on p22.

Among Fuller’s many philanthropic acts were the establishment of the first ‘lifeboat’ at Eastbourne, the building of the Belle Tout lighthouse on the cliff near Beachy Head, and the generous financial support of one of the world’s most venerable and renowned scientific establishments, the Royal Institution. In 1828 he bought Bodiam Castle to save it from destruction.

Jack Fuller died in his London home in 1834 at the age of 77, and was buried under the pyramid in Brightling Churchyard; for long after his death the legend persisted that he was interred sitting upright at a table laid for a feast, wearing a top-hat and holding a bottle of claret, though rather disappointingly this proved to be untrue when eventually the tomb was opened to carry out restoration work.

On 22nd September the village of Brightling will hold a celebration of the 250th Anniversary of Mad Jack Fuller’s birth – including a talk on his life, bell-ringing, morris-dancing (by Hastings’ very own Mad Jack Morris dancers – named after the man himself), a walk around the follies and an evening of dancing, beer and barbeque!  Find out more at: http://madjackfuller.blogspot.com