Firle

Firle (ˈfɜrl; Sussex dialect: Furrel ˈfʌrəl) is a village and civil parish in the Lewes district of East Sussex, England. Firle refers to an old-English/Anglo-Saxon word fierol meaning overgrown with oak. Although the original division of East Firle and West Firle still remains, East Firle is now simply confined to the houses of Heighton Street, which lie to the east of the Firle Park. West Firle is now generally referred to as Firle although West Firle remains its official name. It is located south of the A27 road four miles (9 km) east of Lewes. During the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042–66) Firle was part of the Abbey of Wilton's estate. Following the Norman Conquest the village and surrounding lands were passed to Robert, Count of Mortain. Half-brother of King William I, Robert was the largest landowner in the country after the monarch. The village is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, referred to as 'Ferla'. The value of the village is listed as being £44, which was amongst the highest in the county. The manor house, the site on which Firle Place now stands, was occupied from the early 14th century by the 'de Livet' (Levett) family, an ancient Sussex gentry family of Norman descent who owned the manor. The Levett family would later include founders of Sussex's iron industry, royal courtiers, knights, rectors, an Oxford University dean, a prominent early physician and medical educator, and even a lord mayor of London. An ancient bronze seal found in the 1800s near Eastbourne, now in the collection of the Lewes Castle Museum, shows the coat-of-arms of John Livet and is believed to have belonged to the first member of the family named lord of Firle in 1316. On the bankruptcy of lord of the manor Thomas Levett in 1440, the ownership passed to Bartholomew Bolney, whose daughter married William Gage in 1472. Following the death of Bolney in 1476 without a male heir, the seat of Firle Place was passed to William Gage and has remained the seat of the Viscount Gage ever since.