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Mad Jack's Sugar Loaf
Dec. 18th, 2024 10:03 am I've written before about Mad Jack Fuller (1757-1834)
He was a hard drinking country squire who dotted his estate with follies and had himself buried under a dinky little pyramid in Brightling churchyard.
We were driving round the Sussex Weald the other day and going down one of the few roads we hadn't been down before when I spotted this.
As its tip appeared above the trees I took it for a church- which is what Mad Jack hoped I'd think. In fact it's a free standing cone of masonry, with a circular room at the bottom- and there's a story that goes with it.
At a carouse in London, Mad Jack bet a crony a considerable sum that he could see the spire of Dallington church from his house- only when he got home he found he'd forgotten in his cups that there was a hill in the way. No ptoblem! He wasn't going to be bested by mere topography- and set about rectifying matters by having his builders erect him a spire on the hill top- something that legend says they achieved in a single night. What the legend doesn't say is whether anyone was ever fooled by this stratagem- and whether he lost or won the bet.
They call the thing The Sugar Loaf- because in Mad Jack's day sugar was sold in cones. Incidentally, Jack owned plantations in the West Indies- and sugar was his chief source of income- which may be the true but less amusing reason for the existence of the spire on the hill. And ,yes, he was a slave owner and defended slavery in parliament. On the plus side he was a keen amateur astronomer and one of his other follies is an observatory. He also funded Humphrey Davy.
He would have liked to be known as "Honest Jack" but the public wasn't having it.....
He was a hard drinking country squire who dotted his estate with follies and had himself buried under a dinky little pyramid in Brightling churchyard.
We were driving round the Sussex Weald the other day and going down one of the few roads we hadn't been down before when I spotted this.
As its tip appeared above the trees I took it for a church- which is what Mad Jack hoped I'd think. In fact it's a free standing cone of masonry, with a circular room at the bottom- and there's a story that goes with it.
At a carouse in London, Mad Jack bet a crony a considerable sum that he could see the spire of Dallington church from his house- only when he got home he found he'd forgotten in his cups that there was a hill in the way. No ptoblem! He wasn't going to be bested by mere topography- and set about rectifying matters by having his builders erect him a spire on the hill top- something that legend says they achieved in a single night. What the legend doesn't say is whether anyone was ever fooled by this stratagem- and whether he lost or won the bet.
They call the thing The Sugar Loaf- because in Mad Jack's day sugar was sold in cones. Incidentally, Jack owned plantations in the West Indies- and sugar was his chief source of income- which may be the true but less amusing reason for the existence of the spire on the hill. And ,yes, he was a slave owner and defended slavery in parliament. On the plus side he was a keen amateur astronomer and one of his other follies is an observatory. He also funded Humphrey Davy.
He would have liked to be known as "Honest Jack" but the public wasn't having it.....
