Although the locals who worked there were very discreet, we are told that Edward, Prince of Wales, later Duke of Windsor, partied up at Brook Hill between the wars. Lloyd George, Lord Hugh Cecil and Winston Churchill all visited Jack Seely and family when they lived at Brooke House and Lord Boothby regularly joined shooting parties arranged by Hugh Seely, Lord Sherwood. Winston Churchill and Jack Seely became lifelong friends and the Rector’s diary notes that Winston regularly visited Brook in the early 1900s. A chine (where the Military Road now has traffic lights), became known as ‘Winston’s Chine’ after he and Jack Seely dug it out trying to improve drainage and halt coastal erosion. Alfred, Lord Tennyson would walk from Freshwater Bay across the downs above Brook in his large black hat and cloak. Like Tennyson, when J B Priestley came to Brook Hill after the Second World War he was the equivalent of a superstar today and glad of the beauty and seclusion of Brook. Farm workers have told us that if they met Priestley out walking they were advised not to talk to him in case they disturbed his flow of thought. The list of Priestley’s visitors at Brook Hill included Compton Mackenzie, A J P Taylor and Sir Julian Huxley. John Betjeman referred to the ‘sheer delight’ of Mottistone during one of his visits to his friends Rev. Robert and Elizabeth Bowyer. Judy Campbell, the actress known as Noel Coward’s muse, and who sang ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’, loved the family house in Hulverstone. Jane Birkin, her daughter, is remembered as the tomboy who rushed down Brook Shute on her bike and worked for pocket money in the market garden of Brook House. John Seely, second Lord Mottistone, became a successful architect and with his partner Paul Paget became Surveyor to St Paul’s Cathedral. While not a human being, we cannot leave out General Jack Seely’s horse, Warrior, nor A. J. Munnings, the artist, who drew Warrior in the trenches and battlefields of northern France and later in the peaceful fields of Brook and Mottistone. In this section of the website we focus on just a few of those mentioned here.