St Mary's church (left) and St Peters (right)
(photos kindly contributed by Jacky Lee, Liss)

There are two old churches here in Liss, St Peter's that is mainly 15th or 16th century and has a tower that is 13th century and is said to stand
 on the site of an old wooden church. St Mary's built in 1892 and contributions were given by the local school children when they took  a penny
in to school for this purpose. St Peter's church has six bells and St Mary's has eight.

My memories of Liss, a bit of a mystery!
By Dawn Prince, Canada

My mother went to work at Liss Place Farm in 1947 as a cook/nanny for Mr. & Mrs. John Pappillion. As they did not want a child to be there except for school holidays I was first sent to a convent boarding school. When I was there we lived in the newer part of the house along with the Mr. & Mrs. Pappillion and their children. The old part of the house was used as rented house but previously had been the servants quarters. It had running cold water but no bathroom, which was the old fashioned kind that was out next to the wood shed. When we arrived there a family were living there but I cannot remember their name. They were a married couple who had two children, a boy about my age of six ,and a girl a year or two older. The woman's’ mother  also lived with them. They were a quiet family and the children and I played together when we were all home from school.

Then one night there was quite a “to do” going on outside. We soon found out that the woman next door had vanished into thin air and it happened on a clear starlit night.

It all started when she retired to bed, and shortly after getting in she found she needed to use the bathroom. So she got up and put her dressing gown on along with her slippers and went downstairs to the living room and through the kitchen past her husband and her mother. After a rather long period of time  had elapsed, and she hadn’t returned, they both began to wonder what had happened, so they too went out into the night to see if she had fallen and hurt herself. They checked the toilet, the woodshed and all the other surrounding buildings, she was nowhere to be found. So they came to the big house to ask if she had been seen there which she hadn’t. With them not having a phone Mr. John got my mother to call the police who came out on his trusty old bike. He took all the particulars down and looked around as best he could in the dark and said he would be back in the morning.

Next day he came and brought some volunteers with him and they started to search first the farm and then the out buildings. Down the path towards the wetlands area and nothing was found, not a slipper, or a thread, or a footprint.

Of course this became the talk of the area and people came to see and then to point fingers. Even the constable was thinking that maybe the husband had killed her and hid her somewhere. He was so lucky to have the best witness in the world, his mother in law who swore he never moved from his chair after his wife went out. It was a sad time for us as the two children now did not know where their mother was or if they would ever see her again.

Days stretched into weeks, weeks into months and then months into years and nothing. The family moved a few months after she disappeared as it was too hard on the children, but each year on the anniversary of that day the children came and just sat for hours hoping that she would come back. I used to go and sit and chat with them because they no longer wanted to play at the farm it held too many sad memories. To my knowledge her body was never found and no one ever reported seeing her.

What happened to her? I wonder did she have a lover and they ran off together? But she was only in her night clothes. Was she taken by aliens? But we heard no sound. Did she just walk away? This is the mystery that happened in about 1948 in the old 14 century house. Did it have something to do with her going? I wonder!
Dawn Prince