Hundreds of people queue at a Hove bus stop every day not realising one of the greatest names in history is buried nearby.

Think of Mount Everest and what springs to mind is Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing's heroic efforts in conquering the world's highest peak.

However, few people realise the man the mountain is named after was a surveyor whose last resting place is next to the stop in Hove.

Colonel Sir George Everest is buried close to the front wall of St Andrew's Old Church in Church Road. His name can still be picked out from the fading inscription on his granite headstone.

Historian Judy Middleton is among those keeping his name alive. She has written an encyclopaedia on the history of Hove and is proud of his connections to the area.

She said: "We are lucky that Everest's grave still exists. Most of the graveyard at the back of St Andrew's was lost when the school was built there. Fortunately, Sir George's was at the front.

"Apparently, he was not the easiest of people to get on with and was quite a gruff character.

"He was a real stickler for accuracy and drove himself and those around him harder than they would have wanted.

"He was the sort of man who set himself a task and was determined to finish it whatever the cost. I don't think he would have had many friends, which may explain why there is not a more permanent memorial to him in Hove."

Buried alongside Sir George are his sister and his father-in-law who also died in the mid- 1800s. They chose to be buried in Hove even though they all lived in London.

The reasons why have been lost but Sir George's name will live forever thanks to his work as surveyor general of India. He spent 25 years of his life working on a project to measure the length and width of India.

It took his successor another 15 years to complete the task after Sir George retired and returned to England.

He measured a 1,600- mile section of the meridian, named the Great Arc, which extended from the southern tip of the subcontinent to the foothills of the Himalayas.

The conditions he endured were as tough as those experienced by Hillary and Tenzing when they climbed Everest in 1953.

The theodolite he used weighed half a ton and was carried in a wooden box by 15 men.

His expedition included four elephants, 30 horses for military officers, 42 camels for supplies and equipment and more than 700 labourers on foot.

Thousands of people died working on the survey as the result of animal attacks, yellow fever and accidents.

The calculations Sir George made on his survey were later used to make the first scientific measurement of a mountain then known simply as Peak XV.

It was Andrew Waugh, his successor as surveyor general, who made the measurements and named the mountain after Sir George as a tribute.

Waugh said: "Here is a mountain, probably the highest in the world, without any local name that I can discover.

"I propose to perpetuate the memory of that master of geographical research, Everest."