The Highdown Visitors Book is an amazing time machine. On its discovery, in the West Sussex Record Office, researchers found a remarkable cast of characters who visited Highdown Tower (now Hotel) and Gardens.

It has signatures from 1918 to 1968 of: aristocrats, gardeners, scientists, plant hunters, politicians. What makes it unique is that there are several VIP photographs stuck in amongst the famous signatures, including the Royal family. There is even a poetry ‘battle’ in the Visitors Book, between Sybil’s sister Joan and Frederick Stern.

There are also clues to Frederick’s friendship to the dazzling Prime Minster Lloyd George. And of interest today are hints of Sybil’s activist role in the forgotten suffragist ‘Mass Attack’ of 1928.

During Christmas, in the 1920s, visitors were entertained with fine wines and food; and tried their luck playing cards against the deadly Montefiores. In the 1930s Royal visitors would bump into Head Gardener Buckman and listen to his horticultural advice. Or visitors would have dinner discussing the latest botanical discoveries with plant hunter Frank Kingdon-Ward.

By the 1950s, many of the aristocrat visitors were replaced by young scientists, including E.K. Janaki Ammal, who were given boxes of Highdown plants to take home. Meanwhile, Jewish children, from London’s East End, enjoyed the Sterns hospitality every August on Highdown Hill. This was a popular camping holiday organised by the Oxford and St George’s youth clubs.