Having survived the turmoil into which he had been born, Henry grew into a determined young man who taught himself to read and write. He developed a successful business malting barley and by the time he was 23 years old had become accepted as one of the “principal inhabitants of the parish” who could attend and vote at meetings of the Alfriston Vestry. At 31, the Vestry made him the Alfriston Parish Clerk, because, says an old parochial document, he was a “readie reader”. The parish also considered him a “poet of no mean degree” and particularly admired the “versicles’ in which he wrote out the parish’s Bills of Mortality. Over the years his interests expanded into small-scale farming and he became one of the most prosperous men in the parish after the gentlemen landowners and the big farmers. He was able to ensure that his own sons received adequate schooling, so that when he died in 1776, his third son, William, was able to succeed to the post of Parish Clerk. William held this post until he died in 1783, when it passed to his brother, Henry’s second son, John.

The three parish clerks are buried next to each other in Alfriston churchyard, just inside the gate, up a short slope to the left, under old, spreading trees. The inscription on the headstone of the grave nearest to the church reads:

Here rest the mortal remains of John Lower (second son of Henry Lower) Parish Clerk of this place 18 years, and first person who navigated the Cuckmere River to Alfriston. He died 21^st August 1801, aged 66 years.
Also of Mary his first wife who died the 12^th April 1768 aged 36 years, left issue four children.
Likewise of Sarah his second wife who died 12^th January 1835. Had issue eleven children.

Richard Lower was John’s twelfth and Sarah’s eighth child.

Modern visitors to Alfriston, looking down on the Cuckmere from the low bluff at the further edge of the churchyard, may wonder why so much fuss should be made about so small a navigation, for the Cuckmere is truly a very small river. Compared with, for instance, Stanley’s descent of the Congo, John Lower’s pioneering navigation of four miles up the Cuckmere – say five, allowing for the bends – seems a very tiny achievement. Nevertheless, technically it required a high degree of boatmanship to bring a barge in over the shifting bar of mud and shingle at the river’s mouth in Cuckmere Haven and negotiate the sinuous, silt-laden river bends, especially with a four or five knot tide ready to whisk him into trouble as soon as he made a mistake; and he did not do it just once, but regularly. He established a barge service that was to survive until 1915.