| Notes |
- Details of the marriage from the Sussex Marriage Index are as follows: -
"11 Dec 1777 Salehurst John Spice and Mary Collyer by banns
Witnesses John Butler and Edward Merritt".
Nothing is known of their lives, except that John and his family spent some time in a small village called Robertsbridge, with at least one daughter, Diana, being born there.
Robertsbridge, along with the village of Salehurst, part of the village of Hurst Green, and the hamlet of Silverhill, form the Parish of Salehurst, which itself is contiguous with the Kent border. The steel industry began in Robertsbridge in the latter part of the 16th century and in 1717 had an output of some 120 tons. During the seven years war Robertsbridge supplied many of the great guns that were used during the conflict. These guns were shipped down the river Rother to Rye. The great manor house "sometime called Elam" had 1609 buildings for the steel makers, 8 forges and a mill-house. The river Rother enters the parish of Salehurst from the northwest, divides into two branches, encircling Robertsbridge and uniting again. The river was once navigable at least as far as Robertsbridge, where the Hastings Road passes on its way to Turnbridge Wells. Henry 111 visited Robertsbridge Abbey in 1225 and in 1264 the Royal Army on its way to Lewes, plundered it and obliged the monks to pay a ransom. Edward 1, when as King, also stayed in the abbey on 22 November 1295 and on 8 August 1297. Edward 11 used the abbey as a halfway house between Bayhaam and Battle. In 1749, just before John SPICE was born, Horace Walpole, English novelist and letter writer, and son of Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, and commonly regarded as England's first Prime Minister, visited Robertsbridge and made the following comments " The roads of Robertsbridge are bad beyond all badness and the village is wretched, the only accommodation being taken by smugglers. A railway station built in 1851 on the Southern Railway later served the Kent and East Sussex Railway.
|
