SQUIRE’S MEMORIAL TO HIMSELF

Brooklyn New York Daily Eagle – Tuesday February 2, 1909

[Photo Captions:  The Squire’s Tomb, Cleopatra’s Needle, Sugar Loaf House, Memorial to Squire Fuller, Solomon’s Temple]

In the British village of Brightling are a lot of strange buildings designed by a squire named Fuller, but better known as Mad Jack.  These were constructed to act in perpetuity as memorials to him.  In a sugar-loaf house the squire wished to inure a man for seven years on the understanding that during that time the prisoner was not to shave, wash or cut his hair, or hold communication with the outer world. Food was to be passed in through a small, boarded window. By way of reward, the squire proposed to make the man a “gentleman for life.” The scheme was vetoed by the authorities.  The interior of the squire’s tomb is finely decorated and bear inscriptions from his favorite authors.  The coffin is above ground on a stone trestle and the key to the tomb has been destroyed.  

Notes:

• Captions: Fuller's pyramid mausoleum; Brightling Needle or Obelisk; Sugar Loaf Folly, Brightling Observatory, Rotunda Temple.
• Fuller is buried beneath the floor of the pyramid. The interior is plain with only the ninth verse of Grey's elegy inscribed in the wall: 

'The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave

Await alike th' inevitable hour

The paths of glory lead but to the grave'

• The Sugar Loaf Folly was at one time occupied as a house. There are also unsubstantiated stories of Fuller advertising for a hermit to live in the mausoleum that he built 23 years before his death.