Seven gold bows went missing in Hassocks. The village painted replacements

Seven of the giant gold bows that turn the village of Hassocks gold each September went missing between 7 and 9 September. The bows hang on trees along the High Street, so the organisers who went looking for them read the disappearance as deliberate. They searched everywhere, including the bins. They found nothing. 1

The trail is the centrepiece of Hassocks Goes Gold, the month-long campaign Rachel Bartlett-Bundy began in 2019 in memory of her daughter. Pearl Dixie Bartlett-Bundy died of Ewing sarcoma, a type of bone cancer, in 2017, aged 10. 1 She was a Windmills pupil, and Rachel and her husband Jamie first set out their wish for a gold September in the pages of the village magazine Hassocks Life in August 2019. 2

This year the trail carries 122 bows. Each one is sponsored by a family or a local business for a minimum donation of £30, and can be dedicated to a club, a family or a memory. 12 Every September gets a theme — for 2026 it is golden pineapples — and the bows come with a golden bike that keeps moving around the village for anyone who wants to track it down. 2

Rachel reported the missing bows to the police and posted about them to appeal for information. She had "poured her heart and soul" into the trail each year, she said, and she was "heartbroken". 1

Then the village replied.

Liz Hollingdale, who works at Downlands Community School, asked the school's design and technology department to cut replacement bows. 1 Abigail Look, from Love Art Studios, put the word out and hosted a get-together at Proper Cycling & Coffee, where volunteers painted the new bows gold. 1

Abigail told BBC Radio Sussex that the community responded within hours of Rachel's post about the missing bows, and that it was "lovely" to watch residents and local businesses do their part. 1

The trail is a fundraiser as much as a spectacle. What it raises goes to #PearlPower, a special named fund held at CCLG, the Children & Young People's Cancer Association. 3 The fund stands at about £163,000 and has helped pay for six research projects, among them work on brain tumours, a rare childhood leukaemia called JMML, and Ewing sarcoma — the cancer that took Pearl. 23

One of those projects sits with Professor Adam Mead's team at the University of Oxford, which has identified the cells that make JMML return — work the campaign says could lead to the first immunotherapy for that form of leukaemia. Rachel wrote about the progress to her neighbours, and noted that a local friend's young son, Carey, had been treated for the same disease a few years earlier. 2

The 2026 page on its own has raised £10,139.19, with a further £1,889.72 in Gift Aid. 3

The campaign's argument for that spending sits in two numbers. CCLG says cancer is the most common cause of death in children aged 1 to 14, and that childhood cancer receives less than 1.4% of cancer research funding. 3

The trail stays up for the rest of September: bows in the trees, gold shop windows, Adastra Hall lit gold for the month, and a poster exhibition in the windows along Parklands Road. 2 It closes on Friday 25 September with the Golden Gala, a quiz night with live jazz, a pudding auction and a raffle at The Hassocks pub, where a table for eight costs £50. 2

Rachel is also a finalist in the BBC Make a Difference Awards, which are announced on Tuesday. 1

Donations to the campaign are collected on its Hassocks Goes Gold 2026 page.

Abigail has kept the last word on the theft: "The bows may have disappeared, but they've ended up shining an even bigger light on Hassocks Goes Gold." 1