John Olliver, miller, was an eighteenth-century eccentric, whose morbid fancy for having his coffin made early in life, and wheeled under his bed every night, was not satisfied until he had also built himself a tomb on the hill-top, on a twelve-foot square plot of ground granted him by the landowner, one W. W. Richardson, in 1766: a tomb on which he could with satisfaction look every day. Yet he was not the dull, dispirited man one might for these things suppose; and Pennant, in his _Tour in Sussex_, is found saying, “I am told he is a stout, active, cheerful man.” And then comes this significant passage. “Besides his proper trade he carries on a very considerable one in smuggled goods.” Let us pause a moment to reflect upon the impudent public manner in which John Olliver must have carried on his smuggling activities. To this impudence he added also figures on his house-top, representing a miller filling a sack and a smuggler chased by an exciseman with a drawn sword; after the exciseman coming a woman with a broom, belabouring him about the head. The tomb the miller had built for eventual occupation by his body was in the meanwhile generally occupied by spirits—not the spirits of the dead, but such _eaux de vie_ as hollands and cognac; and he himself was not laid here for many years, for he lived to be eighty-four years of age, and died in 1793. He had long been widely known as an eccentric, and thousands came to his funeral on the unconsecrated spot. Here the tomb, of the altar-tomb type, stands to this day, kept in excellent repair, and the lengthy inscriptions repainted; at whose costs and charges I know not. A small grove of trees almost entirely encircles it. At one end is a gruesome little sculpture representing Death, as a skeleton, laying a hand upon an affrighted person, and asking him, “Whither away so fast?” and at the other end are the following lines: Why fhould my fancy anyone offend Whofe good or ill does not on it depend (A generous gift) on which my Tomb doth ftand This is the only fpot that I have chofe Wherein to take my lafting long repofe Here in the drift my body lieth down You’ll fay it is not confecrated ground, I grant ye fame; but where shall we e’er find The fpot that e’er can purify the mind? Nor to the body any luftre give. This more depends on what a life we live For when ye trumpet fhall begin to found ’Twill not avail where’er ye Body’s found. Blefsed are they and all who in the Lord the Saviour die Their bodief wait Redemption day, And fleep in peace where’er they lay. On the upper slab are a number of texts and highly moral reflections.