John Olliver

The miller was John Olliver, who lived by his mill on Highdown Hill, a dwelling-place of the Romans (who built here a villa), and a burial place of the Saxons, who set up earthworks and left their bronze daggers behind.

Here the miller lived by his mill. Here he chose to lie in an altar tomb he fixed himself, in a coffin he kept under his bed. From this hill the traveller sees the Isle of Wight and Beachy Head, but it is the tomb that brings him here.

The procession of curious people has never failed since they laid John Olliver here in 1793. Two thousand people came to his funeral, gaily dressed, and a schoolgirl read a sermon chosen by the miller.

A group of people dressed in white carried the coffin round the field before they laid him in the tomb which had been waiting there for nearly 30 years.

 

It is covered in doggerel, and a few verses from the Bible.

Queer but clever was John Olliver. He put up a curious device by which, as the sails of the mill went round, a sack opened and a shovel rose up as if to fill it; and another of his odd inventions was the figure of a Customs officer with a raised sword pursuing a smuggler, an old woman running at the officer's heels with a broom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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