The Miller's tomb: facts, gossip, and legend [1]

Folklore, August, 2005 by Jacqueline Simpson

The isolated tomb of John Oliver on Highdown Hill (Sussex) has been a focal point for gossip, jokes and rumour for over two hundred years. Using local documentation and personal fieldwork, this paper traces the development of various strands in this tradition.

One of the best starting-points for gossip and legend-building is a grave, especially if there is something odd about it, or about its occupant. One fine example is the Miller's Tomb, which stands all alone on the crest of Highdown Hill, a few miles west of Worthing (Sussex) (see Figure 1). It is the resting-place of John Oliver or Olliver, a prosperous miller who died in 1793. Local opinion about him is divided, and always has been; some see him as crazy, others as remarkably pious, others as a joker, others as a rogue. He is often mentioned in local newspapers; comments were particularly frequent in 1993, the bicentenary of his death, and in 1982-3, after vandals had partly demolished his tomb. It is too late now to get at the truth, but one can at least work out how these contradictory ideas arose.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Highdown is a pleasant spot with extensive views over the sea in one direction and farmland in the other (now heavily overbuilt). There are many references to the Oliver or Olliver family in local records (Induni 1983), and descendants still live in the area. John Oliver's mill stood on top of the hill, and his house further down the slope facing the sea. Both have long since disappeared, but his tomb is still there--a fine table-tomb, enclosed by railings. Originally there were inscriptions covering every surface, but after the vandalism in 1982 one side was too badly damaged to replace the stonework, so it is now plain concrete.

The inscription on the lid reads: "For the reception of the body of John Oliver, when deceased to the Will of God: granted by William Westbrooke Richardson esq., 1766." Here we have the major oddity from which everything else arises. In 1766 John Oliver was only 57, and he did not in fact die until 1793, a quarter of a century later. So why did he want a tomb so soon? Why alone on the hill rather than in the parish churchyard? And why did Mr Richardson, the landowner to whom the hill belonged, allow him to fulfil his whim?

According to a small guidebook provided for Victorian visitors to the site, [2] the miller's motives were deeply pious:

   While yet in the prime of life he executed the singular purpose of
   building his own tomb, and at the same time had his coffin made,
   which was kept henceforth under his bed. During his later years he
   spent some hours daily in a wooden house which he had erected at the
   head of histomb, where a rustic seat since stood. There, in the
   study of the Scriptures and the perpetual homily it preached, the
   old man's evening of life wound calmly away (Anonymous 1872, 7).

The tomb itself certainly shows many signs of religious preoccupation, being carved with Bible texts and pious verses composed by the miller himself. Those that are now hard to decipher, because of weathering, can be found quoted in various guidebooks and pamphlets (Anonymous 1872; no date). In one poem, he defends himself against the accusation that burial in unconsecrated ground is wrong:

   Why should my fancy anyone offend
   Whose good or ill does not on it depend?
   'Tis at my own expense, except the land
   (A generous grant) on which my tomb doth stand.
   This is the only spot that I have chose
   Wherein to take my lasting long repose;
   Here in the dust my body lieth down--
   You'll say it is not consecrated ground--
   I grant the same, but where shall we e'er find
   The spot that e'er can purify the mind?
   Nor to the body any lustre give?
   That more depends on what a life we live!
   For when the trumpet shall begin to sound
   'Twill not avail e'en where the body's found.
   Blessed are they and only they
   Who in the Lord the Saviour die;
   Their bodies wait Redemption's Day,
   And sleep in peace where e'er they lie.

In choosing a picturesque rural setting for his grave, the miller may also have been following a trend of his times. From the early eighteenth century onwards there had been aristocrats who set up mausoleums on their estates, and in the period from 1770 to 1800 there are several English examples of people lower down the social scale arranging to be buried on hills or in parks (Chambers 1864, vol. I, 804-6, vol. II, 627-8); there are plenty more in France (Aries 1981, 510-11). This choice reflected powerful intellectual and emotional currents of the age--on the one hand, rationalism, with its impatience of conventional religion; on the other, romanticism, with its cult of picturesque nature, its delicate sensibility, and its sense of the personal value of each individual. It is now impossible to know whether John Oliver was himself motivated by these concepts, but they certainly influenced many of those who later visited the tomb, and some of the artists who drew it.

In Figure 2 we have an early nineteenth-century rendering of the view, as seen from inside the summerhouse that the miller built alongside the tomb. [3] It too was adorned with pious poems of his own composition, for example: