Legend says a monk cursed the family given Battle Abbey's lands to end by fire and water; in 1793 Cowdray burned and its young owner drowned in the Rhine within weeks

The curse of Cowdray is a legend. In 1538 Anthony Browne received Battle Abbey after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The story says a dispossessed monk cursed the family: "by fire and water, thy line shall come to an end." No contemporary record of the curse is cited, and one account calls it a "factitious legend." The facts are these. On 24 September 1793 a fire started in the carpenters' workshop at Cowdray, where the house was being repaired for the impending marriage of George Browne, 8th Viscount Montagu. Only three paintings and a few pieces of furniture were saved. Less than three weeks later the 24-year-old viscount, travelling with Charles Sedley Burdett, tried to ride a boat over the Rhine rapids at Laufenburg against local warnings. Both drowned. The title went to a distant cousin, a clergyman. The estate went to the viscount's sister, who had married William Stephen Poyntz. Their two sons are reported to have drowned off Bognor in 1815^†. The three daughters could not agree how to divide the estate, and it was sold in 1843 to the Earl of Egmont. In 1908 it was sold to Weetman Pearson, later 1st Viscount Cowdray. In 2026 the ruins belong to the Pearson family and are cared for by the Cowdray Heritage Trust.