Mid Sussex Times - Tuesday 09 June 1914

THE LATE MR. SILVESTER HORNE, MP.

To the Editor of The Mid-Sussex Times.

Dear Sir,—All the world has recently been informed that the late Member of Parliament for Ipswich was born at Cuckfield, Sussex. We, who live at Cuckfield, would like to know exactly where, especially if a tablet commemorating the fact is to be erected! A public speaker recently said that Mr. Silvester Horne was born at the Manse.

Several old Cuckfieldians say he was born at Tentercroft. The Manse and Tentercroft are neighbours, but not the same by any means. Will someone who knows clear up this doubtful point?

Again, where was he baptized? Many Dissenters, for reasons of their own, bring their infants to the Parish Church to he baptized. Was Silvester Horne baptized at Cuckfield Parish Church? If so, there must be a record of the fact. Or was he baptized at the Congregational Chapel? If so, there ought to be, and probably is a record of it. Or was he taken to that little Bethel whose service he criticised so delightfully in later days? Were his parents Cuckfield people, or only chance visitors?

Yours truly,

SUSSEX.

June 6th 1914

Mid Sussex Times - Tuesday 16 June 1914 THE LATE MR SILVESTER HORNE, M.P. To the Editor of The Mid-Sussex Times.

Sir, There is no difficulty in supplying the information for which your correspondent "Sussex" asks. Charles Silvester Horne was born on the 15th of April, 1865, in the eastern portion of Tentercroft, Cuckfield, this house at that time forming two distinct houses. He and an elder brother were baptised in the Congregational Church, Cuckfield, then known as Ebenezer Chapel, on the 4th of June 1865, and this fact is duly recorded in the Church's Baptismal Register.

The Church itself was pulled down in 1869, but the front portion of the present Congregational Church stands on the site of the old building. Several old Cuckfield inhabitants remember both birth and baptism.

Mr. Silvester Horne's parents were not chance visitors to Cuckfield. His father, the late Rev. Charles Horne, M.A., was the Minister of the Church in which his son was baptised, from 1869 to 1865, and the family left Cuckfield for Shropshire a few months after his son's birth. His mother is still living.

Yours faithfully.

Wm. STEVENS.

Garnalds, Cuckfield,

12th. June, 1914.