Gideon Mantell

The Museum tells a story unique to Cuckfield, for it was here, in the 1820s, that Dr. Gideon Mantell discovered the iguanodon!

Waiting while her husband visited a patient in Cuckfield, so the story goes, Mary Ann Mantell found some fossil teeth in a pile of roadside rubble. These were traced back to the stone quarry at Whiteman's Green, an area of the north of Cuckfield, and Dr Mantell gave the name Iguanodon to the first dinosaur to become known to science.

The museum display, which includes a cast and a replica of dinosaur footprints found on Bexhill beach (above right), complements the memorial to Gideon Mantell at Whiteman's Green.