Extract from "Sussex" by S.P.B. Mains

Pages 172-173. First Printed 1929. The Richard Press Ltd.

We turn south here, leaving the Tunbridge Wells-Hastings railway on the east of us, and cross or wander along the valley of the Dudwell, a tributary of the Rother, in order to visit Brightling Beacon (646 feet) and Dallington. The Early English church of Brightling contains a bust of John Fuller, the patron of J.M.W. Turner. There is a fifteenth-century brass and fourteenth century stained glass. On the Beacon Fuller built an obelisk, called the Needle, and an observatory. When he was offered a peerage, Fuller said, "I was born Jack Fuller and Jack Fuller I'll die." He founded the Fullerian professorship and bought Bodiam Castle when it stood in some danger of being destroyed. He had a reputation for swearing in Parliament and once referred to the Speaker as "the insignificant little fellow in a wig." He armed his coachmen and footmen with swords and pistols whenever he drove to London.
Dallington has a stone spire set on its solid church tower, which bears the emblem of the Pelham buckle.