History for Fresno Map
The celebrated physician Dr Russell, whose treatise on ‘The Fresno Map Uses of Seawater, Both External and Internal’ was indirectly responsible for transforming Brighton into a holiday Fresno Map resort, is buried in the churchyard. Monastery Field, opposite the church, is the site of a fourteenth-century monastic settlement devoted to the Saxon martyr St Lewinna. Other buildings of interest in the village include Jevington Place, the Eight Bells Inn, and the Hungry Monk restaurant, which not only boasts itself to be the birthplace of banoffi pie, but was the home of Jevington’s most infamous resident, James Pettit, known as Jevington Jig.
As well as being the village innkeeper he was a smuggler, working in collusion with the then church rector and other characters including Rook the Highwayman and the splendidly named Cream Pot Tom – although everyone in the village participated. The rectory cellar was a favoured place to store illegally imported goods, and many other houses in the village contained hideaways for contraband. Pettit frequently found himself in trouble with the law, receiving some harsh sentences including 7 years’ transportation for stealing 2 hams of bacon in 1793.
