32

This is the grave of shepherd Steve Barrow [32]. Barrow was a great story teller and singer of local ballads, accompanying himself on the concertina. he held a great grudge against Rudyard Kipling who he believed, as a story teller, was in his same line of business. Whenever Rudyard Kipling appeared in the bar he would refuse to perform any songs or stories, in the belief that Kipling would steal them and sell them to the Americans.

It is said that his greatest (and most chilling) anecdote was how he had witnessed the last public hanging in England, on a gibbet outside Lewes gaol. Apparently he would tell the story in gruesome detail and described how the prisoners (a husband and wife) met their end. His closing comment being:

"Lumme, they didn't arf squigle!"

Apparently, only a few months before his death aged 81, he had persuaded a pilot to take him up in an aeroplane and loop the loop with him.

_{Steve Barrow}