Ditchling has become famous over the past century for its artists and sculptors such as Eric Gill and Sir Frank Brangwyn.

But few people have heard of Amy Sawyer, an eccentric but talented artist, who spent much of her long life in the village.

This gap has now been filled by Anne Parfitt-King in a new book about Amy Sawyer, who is still remembered by some of the older residents despite dying almost 70 years ago in 1945.

She was certainly prolific, exhibiting at the Royal Academy and in many galleries both in the UK and abroad.

But her main subjects of folk tales, fairies and witches are not as well liked these days as they were during the first half of the last century.

Anne Parfitt-King wrote as a child that Amy Sawyer was the most interesting person she had ever met and has not changed her mind since then.

Born in East Grinstead in 1863, Amy was the eldest of seven children. She was trained as an artist at Bushey in Hertfordshire, where the family lived for some time.

She got to know Gill and his fellow artists Edward Johnston and Hilary Pepler in Ditchling, and Gill recorded their meetings in his diaries over the years before the First World War.

But Gill and his associates found a more simple way of life in the 1920s and the guild they formed excluded women. It also moved away from the centre of the village.

There was no hint then of any animosity between them, although Parfitt-King says there were rumours Gill was jealous of her work. One story was that Gill burnt some of her paintings but this has never been proved.

Amy’s life was changed at this time when she developed lead poisoning from paint under her fingernails. She lost the use of her right hand, which became withered and shrivelled.

Forced to give up much of her painting, she instead put on dramas for the Ditchling Village Players. The first of these, Love Is Blind, was performed in 1922 in the large garden of her house but later they moved to a hall.

She wrote several more for the Players, who toured Sussex extensively and one work, The Brown Pot, was put on in London. Sometimes they attracted national attention.

Among those taking part were the sisters Joanna and Hilary Bourne, who later started the village museum.

Writing about Amy’s unusual clothes, Joanna said, “Who else would have dared to float through the village dressed in leopard skin or some other exotic garment far removed from current fashion?”

In old age, Amy wrote amusingly about village life in letters and she also mentioned Ditchling’s stoic attitude towards the privations of the Second World War.

She became progressively weaker through heart disease and died aged 82. She is buried in the village churchyard. An obituary said, “No one did more to foster and encourage everything that was artistic and beautiful.”

  • Amy Sawyer Of Ditchling by Anne Parfitt-King is published by Country Books, priced £15.99