You might be forgiven if you have a pint in the Abergavenny Arms in Rodmell for thinking that a travelling Welshman had stopped off in the village and set up a pub, so un-English is its name.
In fact, the author A.G. MacDonnell set the scene of his famous cricket match in a fictitious Kent village so the pub could have a typical English name. After all, if the title of your best-selling novel is ‘England, Their England’, you would much prefer a pub called The Three Horseshoes and certainly not The Abergavenny Arms.
Historically, this fictitious cricket match of 1930 took place in the quaint East Sussex village of Rodmell. In the real world of the 21st century, the game is still played. The team of the novel ‘The Invalids’ is real enough and they play the match annually on the beautifully situated village ground, now almost 200 years old.
Yet the Abergavenny Arms is actually named after a family that is probably as English as any you can hope to find.
Lord Abergavenny, you see, is also Earl of Sussex.
More interesting still, the family name is one that any Lewesian will recognise – Nevill.
The sprawling Nevill housing estate on the edge of the town is named after the family and is built on land bought from the Névills in 1920.
The history of the Névill family is long and complicated. But the original clan reaches back to pre-Norman Durham, where the ancestors of the Névills, Dolfin, son of Utrecht, were one of a few English noble families that weren’t dispossessed of their lands and titles by William the Conqueror.
In fact, the clan fought side by side with the English in bringing the Scots to heel.
Finding favour with royalty again, the family went on to side with King Henry III against the nobles in the Second Barons’ war, better known as The Battle of Lewes in 1264.
The family were extremely powerful and despite having their ups and downs in the turbulent Medieval and Tudor periods, have survived to this day. The present Earl of Lewes is the 6th Earl, 26th Baron Abergavenny and 10th Viscount Nevill and lives in the small village of Eridge, between Lewes and Crowborough. The name of course is familiar in that the Southdown and Eridge Hunt famously meets each Boxing Day in Lewes outside the White Hart Hotel, although the hounds are now quartered in Ringmer. The present Earl, Christopher Nevill lives in Eridge Park.
The southern family stemmed from the Gages of Firle and the title of Earl of Lewes was bestowed in 1425, never to be revoked, despite the fairly rocky relationship the family sometimes had with the royals.
The family had a serious wobble in Tudor times, however. A favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, the family clung to Roman Catholicism despite the best efforts of post Queen Mary Protestants to separate those who resisted conversion from Rome, from their estates and positions of power.
The Névills were among those who avoided censure and it’s likely that a young Guido ‘Guy’ Fawkes, described as open, hearty and likeable, hardened his religious fervour while working for the Névills in the late 1500s, which he did.
He was intelligent and worldly and undoubtedly became influenced by the family’s pro-Catholic plotting even if he was not directly involved in it.
Certainly, some of the Névill clan ended up in the Tower of London for periods of internment for joining various uprisings and plots intended to restore Catholicism to post Henry VIII’s England.
Fawkes was captured while attempting to set off barrels of gunpowder under the Palace of Westminster in November1605. But despite that, King James I had a soft spot for Fawkes for some reason, finding him intelligent, educated and with reasoned argumentative powers. He ordered the torture team to go easy on him after the ‘Gunpowder Plot’ was discovered and it was only after several days of finally being put on the rack that Guido spilled the beans and named the plotters. This was all totally illegal, by the way. The Magna Carta had already banned torture as a means of gaining information.
It must have been of considerable relief to the Névills, and for that matter their relatives the Gages, that their names weren’t among those associated with the sensational plan to blow up Parliament.
Both families clung firmly to their faith. Fawkes was the last of the seven plotters to die. Crippled by torture, he crawled his way up to the scaffold but managed to edge his way to the base of the gallows and jump. The fall broke his neck, thus preventing him suffering the supreme agony and living hell of being drawn and quartered. It also prevented him from naming any other plotters before he died, and the Sussex associates escaped.
The Névills continued to flourish and although they didn’t exactly keep their noses clean were able to negotiate the sale of land that is now the Nevill estate. The Council had turned down the opportunity to buy the land in the 19th century because they deemed it too windy to live on.
The early 20th Century saw a turn of mind however, and in 1920 the purchase was made. There has never been any suggestion that the Council cheated a bit over the price, but the then Marquis was considered incapable of handling his own affairs and an agent negotiated the deal.
Even then, an astute Lewes Council managed to build the later part of the estate on the cheap, using German prisoners of war as builders, a fact confirmed by initials and graffiti scrawled on water tanks in some of the houses.
The family today lead a fairly unremarkable life, but are quietly influential in undertaking their varied public duties.
But I wonder how many of the Nevill Bonfire boys realise as they stuff fireworks into an effigy, that the place where they live was once owned by a family that employed Guy Fawkes and almost came unstuck from the Gunpowder Plot.
Or that the residents of Rodmell might have ordered their pint at the bar of the Three Horseshoes rather than the Abergavenny Arms.
But then, the Névills come from good English stock and to change the name of the pub wouldn’t have been cricket, old boy.
After all, it’s ‘England, Their England’!
Fawkes undoubtedly became influenced by the family’s pro Catholic plotting…
