Tablet in Wall of Vicarage Garden, Kirdford, West Sussex
This tablet was placed in the wall of the Vicarage Garden at the nearest point to the former Black Bear Inn in 1850 by the then Vicar of Kirdford, the Rev J F Cole, who found a slip of paper in the Vicarage Garden with these words on it:- "Degradation of drunkenness. There is no sin which doth more deface God's image than drunkenness. It disguiseth a person and doth even unman Him. Drunkenness makes him have the throat of a fish, the belly of a swine and the head of an ass. Drunkenness is the shame of nature, the extinguisher of reason, the shipwreck of charity and the murder of conscience. Drunkenness is hurtful to the body. The cup kills more than the cannon. It causes dropsies, cartarrhs, apoplexies. It fills the eye with fire, and the legs with water, and turns the body into a hospital."
