Sussex News - Hailsham & Polegate - 2 October 2026

Owners of a quaint brook in Hailsham say they are still waiting for justice after their business was destroyed overnight due to a pollution incident which killed two thousand fish.

Furnace Brook Fishery was a popular fishing destination, but everything changed when owners Alistair and Diane Gould discovered floating dead fish in the water two years ago.

Alistair, sixty-nine, said, "There were ten hardcore days of death.

We probably pulled out over two thousand dead fish.

The problem started in June 2024, but the brook is still recovering." He added, "It was really horrible and emotional.

From an environmentalist perspective, seeing the knock-on effects of nature and the invertebrates and everything else, there was a really nasty smell as well, a sort of smell of death.

The Environment Agency were called in, and they established that pollution was coming from upstream," the couple say.

This would become the first-ever Category One incident in East Sussex, they explained, which is an extensive event that causes severe harm or impact to the environment.

Simon Dole, who has been at Furnace Brook as an angler for fifteen years, said in a document about his discovery of the dead fish, "It has been distressing for all of us to witness so much death and environmental destruction over such a short period of time, and of course, the destruction of the core economic livelihood of fishery.

There are many who have been enjoying the angling here over several decades, who have become so familiar with some of the specimen fish in the lake, that they were given personal names.

Alistair, who bought the brook with his wife in 2008, said, 'In East Sussex, there is a rich tapestry of people and organizations who want to preserve a main nature restoration.

Generally, we get very good support from district councils to do so.' Martin Klopp, twenty-nine, is now a director at Furnace Brook as part of a new project to turn the once-popular fishing destination into a place for aquatic restoration.

Martin said, 'It's such a heartbreaking incident because there were years and years of work and love put into developing this fishery to become a beautifully biodiverse lake.

We're trying to engage the institutions to get justice from the polluter and trying to remediate the water and increase the water quality.' Martin said that the team at Furnace Brook are using mushrooms as a micro-remediation to attempt to clean out the oils and hydrocarbons.

They are using certain bacteria which can absorb active nutrients and the toxins in the water.

He added, 'We're trying to implement nature-based solutions and also learn from it so we can share it with others.

Lots of water throughout the UK is polluted.

We want more in-system changes.'

Owners of a quaint brook in Hailsham say they are still waiting for justice after their business was destroyed overnight due to a pollution incident which killed two thousand fish.

Furnace Brook Fishery was a popular fishing destination, but everything changed when owners Alistair and Diane Gould discovered floating dead fish in the water two years ago.

Alistair, sixty-nine, said, "There were ten hardcore days of death.

We probably pulled out over two thousand dead fish.

The problem started in June 2024, but the brook is still recovering." He added, "It was really horrible and emotional.

From an environmentalist perspective, seeing the knock-on effects of nature and the invertebrates and everything else, there was a really nasty smell as well, a sort of smell of death.

The Environment Agency were called in, and they established that pollution was coming from upstream," the couple say.

This would become the first-ever Category One incident in East Sussex, they explained, which is an extensive event that causes severe harm or impact to the environment.

Simon Dole, who has been at Furnace Brook as an angler for fifteen years, said in a document about his discovery of the dead fish, "It has been distressing for all of us to witness so much death and environmental destruction over such a short period of time, and of course, the destruction of the core economic livelihood of fishery.

There are many who have been enjoying the angling here over several decades, who have become so familiar with some of the specimen fish in the lake, that they were given personal names.

Alistair, who bought the brook with his wife in 2008, said, 'In East Sussex, there is a rich tapestry of people and organizations who want to preserve a main nature restoration.

Generally, we get very good support from district councils to do so.' Martin Klopp, twenty-nine, is now a director at Furnace Brook as part of a new project to turn the once-popular fishing destination into a place for aquatic restoration.

Martin said, 'It's such a heartbreaking incident because there were years and years of work and love put into developing this fishery to become a beautifully biodiverse lake.

We're trying to engage the institutions to get justice from the polluter and trying to remediate the water and increase the water quality.' Martin said that the team at Furnace Brook are using mushrooms as a micro-remediation to attempt to clean out the oils and hydrocarbons.

They are using certain bacteria which can absorb active nutrients and the toxins in the water.

He added, 'We're trying to implement nature-based solutions and also learn from it so we can share it with others.

Lots of water throughout the UK is polluted.

We want more in-system changes.'