The ghost story at The Mint House is known as The Cuckold's Revenge.
The photograph that hangs in the bed chamber on the ground floor is taken from a 1935 guidebook. I spoke with Harriet Tate, a Historian from The Mint House a couple of years ago and you can hear her talking about the story and the photograph in the audio clips
When scouting for this walk last week with Robert McGowan, I noted some oak apples near Herstmonceux church. The 29th of May is known as Oak Apple Day, when Sussex children would wear an oak apple or oak leaf.
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If one was not worn, then punishment from other children might be served in the form of a pinch on the bottom. It therefore also became known as pinch-bum-day.
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The origin of this is said to be in memory of a time when Colonel Carless had to keep pinching King Charles to prevent him from falling asleep and falling out of a tree, at Boscobel, after the battle of Worcester in 1651. May 29th was the birthday of Charles II.
Also spotted were many cuckoo flowers, so named because they appear at the same time as the cuckoo's first call is heard. They grow along the edge of the riverbank.
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A common name is lady's-smock. Smock was once a slang term for a woman and this common name may make reference to meadow springtime activities.
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There's a lot of folklore about the cuckoo in Sussex, including the cuckoo traditional song. The first verse was said to be chanted by children in the playground.
The cuckoo is a merry bird, she sings as she flies,
She brings us good tidings and tells us no lies;
She picks up the dirt in the spring of the year,
And sucks little birds' eggs to keep her voice clear.​​
Last year I took part in a Conjuring Summer event at The Mint House, when artists responded to a past Pevensey May Day celebration. I recorded a few songs relating to the house/summer that were played as ghostly voices within the house, this being the reason for the echoing quality of the sound. There are a couple here.
Both are traditional. One is a cuckold song relating to the ghost story. The Midsummer Carol (or under another title Sweet Lemany) is traditionally sung at midsummer and is about the practice of gathering flowers for lovers at dawn.