ODDITIES of SUSSEX
Rye, Sussex - A Murderer's Skull
On a dark and blustery night in 1742 a butcher named John Breeds decided
to kill the mayor of Rye, Thomas Lamb, who had fined him for giving short
weight. The man he actually stabbed in the churchyard was Lamb's brother-in-law,
Allen Grebell, who had borrowed the intended victim's cloak.
Breeds was hanged for the crime in 1743 and his body left to rot in a
cage out on the marshes. We can only guess what happened to the rest of
his bones (superstitious women used to collect them as cures for various
pains and diseases), but the top of Breeds' skull remains to this day in
the cage.
A grave slab set into the floor of the church records Grebell's fate,
killed 'by the cruel stab of a sanguinary butcher'. The unlucky Grebell
is said to haunt Lamb House, which later became the home of the novelist
Henry James.
Note:
St. Mary's church turret clock, said to be the oldest in the country,
and the quarter boys who ring the chimes on the quarter-hours. The clock
is still worked by its original 350 year old mechanism. The clock's face
and quarter boys were added in 1760, and the 18ft long pendulum swings down
inside the church tower.
Access
In an upstairs room of the town hall. Ask at the town clerk's office below.
