Pyramid mausoleums and memorials

I recently watched an episode of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple called The Murder at the Vicarage, and noticed a pyramid in the churchyard. The Hampshire village of Nether Wallop doubled as St Mary Mead in this series and the churchyard is of St Andrews. The 15 ft high pyramid is the mausoleum of Francis Douce who died in 1760.
A GEOlocation.ws web page says, "[Francis Douce's] cousin built the pyramid at Farley Mount (26204) and another relative ("Mad" Jack Fuller) has a similar pyramidal mausoleum at Brightling (63951). "
The Horse Monument at Farley Mount Country Park was erected by Paulet St John in memory of a horse, named "Beware Chalk Pit", which carried its owner to a racing victory in 1734, a year after having fallen into a chalk pit whilst out fox-hunting".
I am currently trying to establish whether or not either Francis Douce and/or Paulet St John are related to John Fuller. Can anyone help?

Historic Table from Brightling Park, Sussex, Makes £216,000 at Bonhams

3 March 2011 An important George II carved white painted console table. Photo: Bonhams.

LONDON.- An important carved and painted, marble-topped George II side table, which has been at Brightling Park in East Sussex for over 250 years, fetched an astonishing £216,000 today (2 March 2011) at Bonhams, New Bond Street, as part of the Fine English Furniture and Works of Art sale. Believed to have been designed by the celebrated cabinet maker, William Hallett (1701-1781), it had attracted a pre-sale estimate of £40,000 – 60,000.

The table was commissioned by John Fuller (1707-1755) for the drawing room at Brightling Park (then known as Rosehill House), Sussex, circa 1747. From him, it passed by descent until 1879, when the house was purchased by Percy Tew (and renamed Brightling Park). The house (and the table with it) has stayed within the Tew family until the present day.

According to family photographs, as well as photographs published in The Sussex County Magazine in 1955, the table was situated in the drawing room at Brightling Park in the 1950s. Soon after these pictures were taken, the house’s Georgian wing, that contained the drawing room, as well as the bedroom and dressing room above, was demolished to pay off death duties. However, this table was relocated in the remaining part of the house, where it has been ever since.

Read full article here.

Augustus Elliot Fuller and the Sussex Spaniel

Published in "Dogs in Canada" Magazine, December 6, 2010
Written by Ria Hörter

Most dogs were developed after hundreds of years of evolution and lengthy selection by breeders. However, some breeds owe their existence to just one person.

Augustus Elliot (also Eliot, Elliott and Eliott) Fuller (1777-1857) was an extremely rich British landowner who lived in Sussex, Wales and London, and owned property in Jamaica. Around 1795 he began to develop a line of working spaniels, bred for hunting in the heavy cover and clay soil of Sussex – heavily built dogs for a heavy job.

The Fuller family had its roots in Uckfield and Waldron (east Sussex). In 1776, John Trayton Fuller married Anne Elliot, daughter of George Augustus Elliot (1st Baron Heathfield) and Anne Pollexon (sic)Drake. Their oldest son, Augustus Elliott, was born on May 7, 1777, and the young family settled in Brayley Park, later renamed Heathfield Park. When he was 14, the family moved to Ashdown House in East Grinstead. Augustus and his 10 brothers and sisters were raised as members of the privileged class of aristocratic, well-to-do 18th- and 19th-century families that combined business with pleasure, where pleasure meant hunting with dogs.

Read the full article here.

BBC 4 Open Country: Sussex Visions

16 July 2009: Host Matt Baker accompanied by journalist and author John Naish [Enough: breaking free from the world of more, 2008] explore and discuss Fuller's follies including the Sugarloaf, Tower and Pyramid.
Listen to the broadcast here: BBC 4

Hester: the Remarkable Life of Dr Johnson's 'Dear Mistress' - by Ian McIntyre

The rattlesnake of Dead Man's Place: Henry Hitchings applauds a Life that reveals there is much more to Hester Thrale than her time with Dr Johnson
Hester Thrale might barely be known to posterity but for a meeting that took place one January evening in 1765. The playwright Arthur Murphy brought a guest to dine at her house in Dead Man's Place near Southwark Cathedral. That guest, Samuel Johnson, made an immediate impression on the 23-year-old Thrale, and so began a friendship that would last nearly 20 years. To generations since, Thrale has been little more than "Dr Johnson's Mrs Thrale" - a mixture of ornament and helpmeet - but, as Ian McIntyre's appealing biography demonstrates, she was a formidable and original figure.
There was always a whiff of the absurd about Hester. Her family, the Salusburys, were Welsh gentry, and, proud of her ancestry, she often made extravagant claims of kinship - such as to one Adam of Salzburg, a follower of William the Conqueror. An assiduous chronicler of her own existence, she was always looking for ways to enliven it.
Read full article here.