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- Next Meeting: Sue Berry, ‘Lewes Development in the 1830s and 1840s’
- Members’ News (by Neil Merchant)
- New Street Stories publications: Mill Road and Chapel Hill
- The Thames Steam Packet visits Lewes
- Horsfield getting cheaper
- The 1768 Lewes Borough election
- A 1781 letter from Brighton to Lewes
- A Funeral Sermon preached by Rev John Vinall
- Historic Lewes for sale in Castle Ditch Lane
- Gideon Mantell’s account of King William IV’s visit to Lewes
- Next Meeting 7.30 p.m. King’s Church Lewes Monday 12 September Sue Berry Lewes Development in the 1830s and 1840s
After a long period of growth and change during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Lewes suffered from a recession which began in the mid-1820s and continued into the 1830s. Many other towns, including Brighton suffered. Attitudes towards transport, politics and investment in Lewes had to change. Lewes lost an MP as a result of the 1832 Reform Act when growing towns such as Brighton were given MPs for the first time. The first railway line, connected only in 1846, was dependent mainly on external investors and decisions. But the town had many useful assets such as the river beside which foundries and other businesses which needed cheap bulk transport could be developed and strong regional links. Thus Harveys bought their present riverside brewery site in 1838 to import coal to use, and to sell. Other businesses such as foundries prospered. We shall see Lewes reviving and changing too.
- Members’ News (by Neil Merchant)
The final members poll results on meeting format, with 280 votes from our 540 members (52%) were:
All meetings by Zoom 80
All meetings physical meetings in a Room 69
Hybrid – summer Room, winter Zoom 131
At its August meeting your committee reviewed this outcome and, in accordance with the poll, decided that the meetings from November 2022 to March 2023 will be Zoom meetings, but that those from April – October 2023 will be live meetings, held at the King’s Church Building.
The Lewes History Group will again be participating in the Lewes Heritage Open Days on 10 & 11 September. We will have a presence in Lewes House on School Hill from 10 am to 5 pm on both days, at which we will be launching the sale of our two new Street Stories volumes. We shall also have panel displays featuring two new research projects undertaken by members. One is on Winterbourne Lodge (at the corner of Brighton Road and Winterbourne Hollow) undertaken by Bill Kocher and the other, authored by Chris Taylor, on John Steinhaeuser.
- New Street Stories publications: Mill Road and Chapel Hill
The two new books in our Street Stories series – on Chapel Hill and Mill Road, South Malling – will be published on 10 September. Both books present the results of research by our members and will be on sale (price £7.50 each) at:
- Our Heritage Open Days exhibition at Lewes House on 10 and 11 September.
- Our September Meeting at King’s Church on Monday 12 September
- From the Tourist Information Centre (next to the Town Hall) from 10 September
- By mail order via the LHG website (small charge for P & P)
- The Thames Steam Packet visits Lewes
The 1 Nov 1821 Morning Post reported that, for the first time within living memory, the ‘Thames’ steam packet had proceeded up-river from Newhaven to visit Lewes. The tide was high, the weather fine, and a large crowd of people gathered to watch the spectacle. The ‘Thames’ fired her cannon regularly as she progressed up river, and there was also a band playing on board to mark the occasion.
To welcome the ship the staff of the iron foundry of Messrs Stent and Gibson of the Cliffe loaded three guns. Two were fired a few minutes before the arrival of the ‘Thames’ without incident but the third, fired as the packet approached, burst into numerous pieces. The lad who fired it was wounded in the hand and knee, but not seriously. Amazingly none of the other people nearby were injured, but one piece of the cannon, weighing 7 pounds, sailed over several houses and crashed through the shop window of Mr Henry Verral, surgeon, Cliffe. It was later ascertained that the cannon had been overloaded, and packed with wet wadding.
- Horsfield getting cheaper
The standard antiquarian local history for Lewes and its surrounding area is that published in two volumes in 1824 and 1827 by Thomas Walker Horsfield, minister of Westgate Chapel.
A few decades ago a copy in decent condition would have cost several hundred pounds. However, the value of such antiquarian books has gone the same way as that of brown furniture or Victorian works of art. What looked a nice copy in the original bindings was offered in Gorringe’s July Book Sale. Estimated at £70-£100, it sold for £50.
- The 1768 Lewes Borough election
By the 1760s the Duke of Newcastle and Thomas Sergison had combined their forces to control the election of the borough’s two MPs, and in 1754 and 1761 their two candidates, Thomas Sergison himself and Sir Francis Poole, whose wife had been a Miss Pelham, were returned unopposed. Lewes was not however a pocket borough, but had voluntarily placed itself under Pelham patronage, and expected to be treated accordingly. It liked to be represented by Pelhams or local men, and was resistant to Newcastle nominees who did not have local connections. The Sergisons had built up their property in the town and first stood unsuccessfully against Newcastle, but from the 1740s onwards reached an accommodation with the Duke.
Both Poole and Sergison died before the next general election, scheduled for 1768. The Duke found he had no suitable family candidates, and at Poole’s death he nominated William Plummer, a stranger to both himself and to Lewes, but recommended by the Duke of Devonshire. A challenge was mooted, but nothing materialised, so Plummer was elected. Sergison also died before 1768, so Newcastle began his preparations, settling on William Plummer and Thomas Hampden of the Glynde Place family, always sound Whigs. However, at the last moment Plummer was offered a safer Hertfordshire seat so the Duke, by now not in the best of health, was left with a problem.
A popular local choice was Colonel Thomas Hay of Glyndebourne, an army officer whose father was William Hay, a busy Whig activist who had represented the rotten borough of Seaford in Newcastle’s interest until his death. Newcastle was initially concerned that an army officer might have the wrong inclinations, but on Hay giving assurances and Newcastle finding no sound alternative he adopted him in February 1768. This adoption was not without doubts – three days earlier he had written to William Michell, who acted as his Lewes election agent,
“There is another strong objection to Colonel Hay which it is impossible for me, who am at the head of my family and name, to get over. I have for the service of the town and agreeable to what was the practice of my ancestors, fixed the family of Glynde to have one, and if Glyndebourne is to have the other it is a total exclusion of everyone of the name of Pelham.”
Newcastle’s attitude to Colonel Hay cooled when a suitable alternative candidate, Thomas Miller, came forward, and once he realised that Hay had fallen out with a cadet branch of the Pelhams based in Catsfield he decided to support Miller instead. This seems to have been a family dispute, as Thomas Hay’s mother had been a Miss Pelham from the Catsfield family. However, by the time this decision was made Thomas Hay had already canvassed Lewes as one of Newcastle’s candidates, and many of the townsmen had given him their word that they would support him.
In those days an Englishman’s word was his bond, and Newcastle was too unwell to come to Lewes himself, so at the election Hay defeated Miller, and joined Hampden in Parliament. Newcastle was deeply hurt that Lewes had rejected his guidance. He decided to give no plate to the Lewes races that year; to withdraw the usual entertainments; to evict those tenants who had voted for Hay; and to withdraw his custom from those shopkeepers and tradesmen who had so offended him. Newcastle’s chief allies, Thomas Pelham of Stanmer Park and the Duke of Richmond eventually managed to persuade him this would be counter-productive. As Richmond wrote:
“It will be a handle for them to say that your friendship for Lewes was only for the sake of choosing the members, that you looked on them as slaves who were not only to obey your orders but to guess your will”.
In the end Newcastle was satisfied with grovelling apologies from those who had voted the wrong way. A typical example was that of the printer William Lee, who wrote that he was sorry to have offended His Grace, but really thought that what he did was what his Grace would have approved.
Source: Lewis Namier & John Brooke, ‘The House of Commons 1754-1790’ (Sussex section).
- A 1781 letter from Brighton to Lewes
The letter below sent from Brighton to Lewes on 12 December 1781 was offered for sale on ebay in July 2022 as an “entire” – an example of a letter written folded, addressed and despatched. This letter was sent in the ‘Bye Bag’ on an ordinary stage-coach rather than in a formal mail-coach. The address “Revd Mr Crofts, Lewes” was quite sufficient for the missive to reach its intended recipient, though as rector of St John-sub-Castro from 1774 and sequestrator of Southover Peter Guerin Crofts (c.1745-1784) was a prominent person in the town. The first of a dynasty of men with this distinctive name, he has appeared previously in these Bulletins, most notably in Bulletin no.105. At this date he and his family lived at 162 High Street, a little to the east of St Michael’s church, which had been leased from the Glynde Estate by the previous rector of Southover. Southover church had no parsonage, while the parsonage of St John-sub-Castro, at the junction of High Street and what is now Station Street, was leased to a tailor.
The letter itself is reproduced below.
The author of the letter was Rev Henry Michell (1715-1789), a clergyman who soon after graduating from Clare College, Cambridge, was appointed rector of Maresfield in 1739 and vicar of Brighton from 1744. He held both posts simultaneously until his death in 1789, but due to the mushroom growth of Brighton during his long tenure that was where he lived. He was a well-known figure in the fashionable town, and has a memorial in St Nicholas’ church.
Henry Michell was himself a native of Lewes, baptised at St Michael’s church as a tiny baby. His elder brother William Michell (1708-1771) was a prominent Lewes attorney, acting for the Duke of Newcastle and most of the rest of the town’s Whig establishment, particularly the Gages of Firle. In his 1769 will William Michell made a specific bequest to his brother James (1721-1779), who succeeded to his Lewes legal practice, of a miniature painting of his patron, the late Sir William Gage. It was the Gages of Firle who held the right to nominate the clergymen of Maresfield and Brighton, and doubtless through his brother’s influence that the Rev Henry Michell obtained this clerical post. William Michell had no direct heirs and his brother James Michell only a daughter, at school at the time of his death, so it was Rev Henry Michell who inherited most of the family’s accumulated landed property.
One small element of this property, purchased by William Michell in 1754 and passing to his brother Henry in 1771, was five acres of land in the Hides. This was the sloping area of downland between Western Road and the Winterbourne. The subject of the letter is the proposed sale of this piece of land to the Governors of Queen Anne’s Bounty, to augment the income of the underfunded rectory of Southover. The purchase, for which the Governors paid £400, was completed in 1782, and Rev Peter Guerin Crofts will have been the initial beneficiary. A generation later, when Rev John Scobell was rector of both All Saints and Southover, neither of which had a parsonage, a new Southover rectory was built on part of this land. This rectory later became St Anne’s Special School, which closed in 2005 and has since largely been left to moulder. The rest of the land became part of the adjacent cemetery.
Henry Michell had evidently been asked whether he was legally entitled to sell this property, or whether his wife had any interest. He had married Faith Reade at Maresfield in 1747, and over the following decades she presented him with no fewer than 16 children, though more than half, including all the first four, died in infancy. He explains in the letter that her property had simply been transferred to him at their marriage, without any formal marriage settlement to protect her, and that they had since taken all the necessary legal steps to ensure that all his quite substantial landed estate was at his own disposal. Mr Raynes, the attorney who had succeeded to the Michells’ Lewes practice, could validate this. However, he does point out that in bequeathing him the Hides, William Michell had made it the security for an annuity of £8 p.a. that he had granted in his will to a former servant of the Duchess of Newcastle, which was enabling her to live out her life in Bath. They would need her agreement to transfer the security for this annuity to another element of Michell’s estate, but if she withheld her consent “as old women are timorous” he would agree to some other arrangement to indemnify Southover.
Rev Henry Michell’s own 1789 will shows that he then lived in the vicarage at Brighton, and still possessed substantial landed estates. A portrait of him, taken from a miniature, survives at The Keep. He has an entry, which emphasises his scholarship, in ‘The Worthies of Sussex’. His wife Faith survived him by almost 20 years, dying in 1809. He was also survived by five sons and two daughters. His grandson Henry Michell Wagner, through one of these daughters, was one of his successors as vicar of Brighton, holding this post from 1824 to 1870, slightly exceeding his own long tenure. It was during his grandson’s period in office that St Nicholas’s church was joined by so many other Brighton churches.
Sources: There is more detailed information about this sale in ESRO R/C /484, which shows that the former Duchess of Newcastle’s servant did not prove timorous; lewesbonfirecelebrations.com; Mark Antony Lower, ‘The Worthies of Sussex’ (1865), pp.229-230; Henry Michell’s portrait is ESRO PAR 277/7/10/1; his commonplace book is ESRO AMS 7027; his 7 May 1789 will is ESRO SAS/C 40/390; James Michell’s 1 Mar 1773 will is ESRO SAS/C 389; for the Michell family see http://www.devon-mitchells.co.uk/getperson.php?personID=I3&tree=Lewes.
- A Funeral Sermon preached by Rev John Vinall
The career of the Rev John Vinall, minister at Jireh Chapel in Lewes, at Mr Brooke’s chapel in Brighton and Providence Chapel Chichester, was recounted in Bulletin no.134.
Some of his sermons, including this one preached from the Book of Revelations chapter 14 at the funeral of a Brighton man who died in 1818, were subsequently printed as hardback books and made available for purchase by those of his followers unable to attend the original event or wishing for a permanent record of the event.
Few copies survive, but this one was recently offered for sale on ebay for £35 by Humber Books, a Hull book dealer specialising in Protestant theology.
John Vinall was an immensely successful Evangelical preacher, and at this date hundreds of people flocked to Jireh every Sunday morning from Lewes and the surrounding countryside to hear his inspirational teaching. He would then leave for Brighton, where he delivered an afternoon sermon to another large congregation.
- Historic Lewes for sale in Castle Ditch Lane
This property apparently built partly of Caen stone and now converted to 2-bed residential use, tucked away on Castle Ditch Lane was available in the Spring via Oakley Properties at £385K.
- Gideon Mantell’s account of King William IV’s visit to Lewes
In 1831 Gideon Mantell published a short account of the visit to Lewes made by King William IV and Queen Adelaide on 22 October 1830. Few copies survive. One copy belonging to the late Rendel Williams was sold for £70 by the West Sussex auctioneers Tooveys in July.
Another six volumes of works by Mantell from the same collection, mainly about fossils and geology, but including a copy of his 1846 publication ‘A Day’s Ramble in and about the Ancient Town of Lewes’, were sold for £420.
John Kay
Contact details for Friends of the Lewes History Group promoting local historical events:
Sussex Archaeological Society
Lewes Priory Trust
Lewes Archaeological Group
Friends of Lewes
Lewes History Group Facebook, Twitter
Lewes History Group 