Phyllis Dunn (1904–1989)
When Phyllis Dunn died in 1989, she left a substantial legacy to BOTPS. This reflected the Dunn family’s close ties to Bexhill Old Town.
Born Phyllis Mary Brewer in Wales to a well-to-do family, she moved to Bexhill with her mother and three siblings on the death of her father. While we don’t know the exact date, we do know that Phyllis was then a young woman as she was Junior champion of the Sussex County Championships [a men and women’s grass court tennis tournament founded in 1889]. She was also keen on country pursuits, particularly fly fishing. It was in Bexhill that she met her husband, Francis Scrivens Dunn (1882-1946), a Captain in the 5th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment. She was thought to have been about twenty-three at the time of their marriage – Francis was twenty-two years older. Tragically, he contracted rheumatic fever on their honeymoon, which left him paralysed and in a wheelchair.
Phyllis is credited with designing the first ever motorhome, including a ramp so that Francis get his wheelchair on board easily and sit beside his wife while she took the wheel (she was a great motoring enthusiast and amateur mechanic). The vehicle began as a 4-litre, six-cylinder Pontiac with local coachbuilders, Russell, commissioned to build the body on the chassis. It was finished in 1936 when the Dunns began touring southern England. So important was the vehicle considered to be in motoring history that it sold for £34,500 when it came up for auction in 2016 (this vehicle was not part of the legacy to BOTPS).
It was the Moorman family who accrued a considerable property portfolio around Bexhill Old Town in the nineteenth century, including Millfield (previously The Firs), Chantry Cottage, Hillside Cottage, Genista House (later renamed Goddard House), the Granary (previously Sycamore House) and various plots of land, including 30 acres near Bexhill downs. Ann Moorman married Samuel Scrivens, at which point the Scrivens family became the largest landowners in the town after the Sackville family. One of Ann and Samuel’s daughters, Maria, married Henry Le Mesurier Dunn – Francis was their second son and the family lived at Borezell on Upper Sea Road. It was through the Dunns that Phyllis left such considerable wealth.
It is thanks to Michael Kent, for a long time, the Chair of BOTPS, that the legacy came about. He had been Phyllis’s financial adviser for many years and when she asked him what should be done with her money on her death given that she and Francis had no children, he suggested she could give something back to the Old Town, as this was the area from which the Dunn family wealth had derived. The Phyllis Dunn Fund has made an enormous difference to Bexhill Old Town over the past thirty years, including the brick pavements and lamp posts that are to be seen throughout the Old Town; major repairs and renovations to the Manor Barn; funding the flood lighting of St Peter’s Church; paying for the entire redesign of Barrack Hall Park, including relocating the allotments and improving the children’s play area; and numerous grants both to residents of the Old Town to help maintain their historic buildings and to many local schools, churches and philanthropic organisations. Naturally, all this activity has eroded the capital over time, but modest grants are still available in her name. Phyllis was a remarkable woman – formidable and feisty – and the BOTPS will forever be indebted both to her and to Michael Kent.
