Lewes History Group

Please note: this Bulletin is being put on the website one month after publication. Alternatively you can receive the Bulletin by email as soon as it is published, by becoming a member of the Lewes History Group, and renewing your membership annually

1.    Next meeting: 14 October 2024, Sue Berry, ‘The Georgian Craftsmen of Lewes’
2.    Other upcoming events
3.    A poor shoemaker and his apprentice
4.    Not so Funny
5.    Memories of a late-Georgian Lewes childhood
6.    Lewes subscribers to Dr Dodderidge’s theology
7.    Malling from the Coombe
8.    The recipe for twenty gallons of soup
9.    Lewes photographer Frank Shoulder
10.  The Lewes Company of the Royal Garrison Artillery
11.  Lewes Building Society advertisement
12.  St Martin’s Lane by Greg Parmenter

1.    Next Meeting               7.30 p.m.            King’s Church        Monday 14 October

       Sue Berry                     The Georgian craftsmen of Lewes 

The full title of Sue Berry’s talk to us this month is ‘Builders, designers and decorators of interiors – the Georgian craftsmen of Lews and local country houses, 1710-1820’. Her talk will explore the impact of patronage and other influences on the work of Lewes craftsmen, with a particular focus on the work of Arthur Morris and his successor John Morris, and their rivals Joseph Wilds, Amon Wilds and Amon Henry Wilds. There were many examples of such craftsmen working on local country houses between 1720 and 1760, but such work then fell away. They then had to find other sources of income, such as speculative housing development. Brighton was booming in the later part of the period, but soon developed its own supply of craftsmen. However, the Morris and Wilds families have left their mark on Lewes, on Brighton and on the wider rural area they served.

2.        Other upcoming events

On Friday 4 October 2024, starting at 7.30 p.m., Sue Berry will give a talk entitled ‘The story of our Lewes Churches’, and then Peter Varlow will speak on ‘St Thomas à Becket, Lewes’ Hidden Gem’. The talks will be in Cliffe Hall, by the church. Tickets are £7, and can be obtained from https://LewesChurchesTalks.eventbrite.co.uk. The talks are in aid of the work of St Thomas à Becket Church, Cliffe,

The Sussex School of Archaeology and History are organising a study day for Saturday 12 October at the Kings Church Building, Brooks Road, Lewes. The topic is ‘Living in Tudor and Stuart Sussex, c.1500-1700’. A series of expert speakers will explore how people in the Tudor and Stuart periods made a living, what they wore, where they lived and worshipped, and how they were helped if they became very poor. Key events included the closure of the monasteries by Henry VIII, the emergence of England as a Protestant nation, the attempt by Spain to invade England and the failure of the Spanish Armada, the English Civil War and Commonwealth, and the restoration of the Stuarts as monarchs. You need to book in advance to attend. The course fee is £30 (£15 for online attendance) and booking is via http://www.sussexarchaeology.org/tudor-stuarts-programme.    

   3.         A poor shoemaker and his apprentice

At the Easter Quarter Sessions in 1675 the assembled magistrates had to consider the situation of Abell Stepney, a cordwainer [shoemaker] who had fallen on hard times. A magistrate’s order that he should be removed from St Michael’s parish to Southover was respited until the next sessions. At the same time his apprentice Thomas Jeffrey was discharged from his apprenticeship, as the magistrates agreed that his master could neither maintain the lad or keep him in work. The case was not mentioned at the following Quarter Sessions. Abell Stepney had married at St Michael’s in September 1673, and had daughters baptised there in 1674, 1675, 1677 & 1680, followed by a son in 1685.

An apprenticeship, for which a premium was paid up front either by the parents or the parish, was a binding legal agreement on both sides, and could only be discharged by a court order. An apprentice formally became a member of his (or her) master’s family, and on completing the term acquired his master’s legal settlement. The magistrates dealt with many consequent disputes and difficulties arising across the county. Some people refused to accept apprentices allocated to them by their parish, so had to be compelled to do so by the court. Masters could die, or their business could fail. Where a widow continued her late husband’s business, she could be compelled to take on his apprentice too. A brutal master who mistreated his apprentice, by the standards of the time, saw his apprentice discharged and was ordered to repay most of the premium. Some apprentices ran away, and if caught were returned on pain of imprisonment. Others proved disobedient or incompetent, one being formally described as an idiot, and were discharged, as was a tailor’s apprentice whose eyesight became too poor for the trade. An apprentice who was impressed for service in the Royal Navy by the press gang had to get an order to force his master to take him back when he returned. Another apprentice married six months before the end of his term, and was discharged by agreement – the magistrates decided that his marriage was a more binding commitment than his apprenticeship.

Source: Quarter Sessions Order book, ESRO QO/7-9; Familysearch.

4.         Not so Funny

The news from Lewes in the 12 May 1798 Hampshire Chronicle included the following items:

5.         Memories of a late-Georgian Lewes childhood

Henry Waller was born in Lewes in November 1815. He became a shoemaker, married Martha Weston in 1838 and had a family of at least ten children, though three died in infancy. In about 1850 they moved to Ringmer. There Henry became a postman delivering mail around the village, walking ten miles every morning after a 7 a.m. start, and a further two miles in the afternoon. When he eventually retired from this role in 1904 at the age of 88 he calculated that he had walked over 150,000 miles in this role, a distance equivalent to six times the diameter of the earth. He also walked for pleasure, thinking nothing of walking into Lewes and back at the end of a day’s work. You can see that his two roles as postman and shoemaker were complementary.

This remarkable career attracted the attention of the national press, with reports in the Daily Telegraph and the London Standard copied by other newspapers as far afield as the Baltimore Sun. He was noted as still strong and sturdy, and able to sort his deliveries without the aid of spectacles. Despite the distance he had covered, he had never in his life journeyed more than 15 miles from his native town. It was also noted that despite his 40 years employment by the Post Office, he did not qualify for a pension as he was only an auxiliary postman. He lived until 1912, so did qualify for the state pension when it was introduced by Lloyd-George. He died aged 96 at 3 Springett Cottages on Ringmer Green, cared for by two daughters one of whom was herself an old-age pensioner, and is buried in a family grave in Ringmer churchyard.

Looking back to his youth in Lewes he told the Daily Telegraph reporter that one of his earliest recollections was joining other boys running after the daily coach to Brighton when it left the Dorset Arms. There was also a daily coach to and from London, while parcels were carried in a big van. One of his pastimes as a boy was catching goldfinches, which were then abundant. The males were sent in batches in the van to dealers in London, confined in a cage, with the empty cage returned on the next trip containing the proceeds wrapped inside a stocking. The males were sold as cage birds, with the boys receiving seven or eight shillings per dozen. The female birds were killed and eaten.

He recalled the 1830 visit to Lewes by King William IV and Queen Adelaide. They drove from Brighton, and during their stay in Lewes visited some of the historical places in the borough. He also remembered the great rejoicings at the coronation of Queen Victoria. A whole sheep was roasted in the yard hard by the Dorset Arms, and in the “dripping pond” a big dinner was provided for all the poor people, men, women and children.

6.         Lewes subscribers to Dr Dodderidge’s theology

Rev Philip Dodderidge was one of the most influential non-conformist theologians of the 18^th century. His academy trained many non-conformist ministers, including Rev Ebenezer Johnston, a Scot who was minister at Westgate Chapel from 1742 until his death in 1781. He had an immense output of published work, including the ‘Family Expositor’, an edition of the Bible carefully annotated to make clear its meaning. These publications were financed by advanced subscriptions, and the subscribers names are included in the printed copy.

For Dr Dodderidge’s volume on Paul’s epistles to the Romans and Corinthians, published in 1759, there were five Lewes subscribers on the long national list. One of these was Rev Ebenezer Johnston, whose brother Rev William Johnston, a non-conformist minister at Tunbridge Wells, also subscribed. The other four Lewes subscribers were:

• Mr John Banister near Lewes, a Ringmer farmer whose children were baptised at Westgate
• Mr Chambers of Lewes
• Mr John Plumer of Lewes
• Mr Samuel Ollive of Lewes, son of Rev John Ollive, Ebenezer Johnston’s predecessor at Westgate and the future father-in-law of Thomas Paine.

7.         Malling from the Coombe

This undated postcard by an anonymous publisher shows the view from the southern slope of the Coombe towards Malling Mill, its Mill House and Mill Road. The original turnpike track steeply up the hill, used until the new route round Malling Down was constructed in 1830 but by this date reduced to a footpath, can be seen to diverge from Malling Street just beyond the junction with Spences Lane. Spences Lane at this date had just a handful of houses, most of them well above flood level. On the west side of Malling Street there were quite a cluster of houses, cottages, barns and other buildings between the Brewery and the junction with Spences Lane, all now replaced. Some of the cultivated ground there appears to be ridged up for potatoes or a similar crop. This postcard image must predate the destruction of Malling Mill by fire in 1908.

8.         The recipe for twenty gallons of soup

After the introduction of the New Poor Law via the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act some local groups tried to relieve winter poverty amongst the poor by the provision of free soup and coal, the cost of which was covered by voluntary subscriptions. The charitable residents of the parishes of Cliffe and South Malling worked together to establish such provision, and an edition of the Sussex Express carried the recipe for making 20 gallons of soup’

The ingredients required were 20 lb of beef, a bushel of split peas, a gallon of oatmeal, 6 lb of carrots, a gallon of onions, a gallon of turnips, two or three heads of celery and pepper and salt. The mixture was then simmered for 16 hours. The peas were to be put in a coarse bag and suspended by a stick across the copper to prevent them burning. The total cost of the soup was ninepence per gallon.

The 11 January 1840 Sussex Express reported that South Malling parish alone was now providing 40 gallons of soup twice every week in the winter. In addition to the 40 lb of beef there was now also a bullocks head included in the mixture, along with turnips, carrots onions and peas. Potatoes were now also included, along with a little celery, 3½ lb of salt and 5 ounces of pepper. The soup was boiled for 12 hours before it was ready.

9.         Lewes photographer Frank Shoulder

Frank Shoulder, a carpenter and one of the Lewes photographers more rarely encountered, was active as a photographer in the 1880s [see Bulletin no.142]. Another of his cartes de visite was recently offered for sale on ebay. This was again a simple studio portrait, of a married couple with their dog. The reverse is just stamped with the photographer’s name, without an address.

10.      The Lewes Company of the Royal Garrison Artillery

This original photograph by the Lewes photographer Bliss shows the 3^rd (Lewes) Company of the Sussex Royal Garrison Artillery posed in front of a large villa was offered recently on ebay by a Sussex-based dealer. It probably dates from the first two decades of the 20^th century. The Sussex Royal Garrison Artillery were a volunteer army unit.

The detailed image below shows the unit’s buglers, seated on the ground at the front, and their officers and senior NCOs seated in the row behind them.

11.      Lewes Building Society advertisement

This advertisement for the Lewes Building Society, taken from a 1930s publication, was recently offered for sale on ebay. It was based at 11 High Street, later and until quite recently a branch of the National Westminster Bank. Local directories list it as the Lewes Co-operative Benefit Building Society up to 1938, but just as the Lewes Building Society by 1951.

The Lewes Cooperative Benefit Building Society was established by the Lewes Co-operative Industrial and Provident Society in 1870 and incorporated in 1876. Its first premises were in the Co-operative Society’s offices in West Street, but it moved to 1 Fisher Street in about 1897 and then to the former Lewes Dispensary premises at 11 High Street in 1920. In the 1960s and 1970s it had branch offices in Seaford, Uckfield, Brighton and Hastings, but then merged into the Southdown Building Society, which in turn merged into the Leeds Permanent Building Society and then the Halifax Bank.

Source: The Keep online catalogue

12.      St Martin’s Lane by Greg Parmenter

This small ink and watercolour drawing by Shoreham artist Greg Parmenter is dated 2 February 1980 and appears to be painted with sufficient accuracy to become in the course of time a useful historical record. I imagine that St Martin’s Lane will already have changed significantly since 1980.

John Kay                                             01273 813388                                       johnkay56@gmail.com 

Contact details for Friends of the Lewes History Group promoting local historical events
Sussex Archaeological Society:  http://sussexpast.co.uk/events
Lewes Priory Trust:  http://www.lewespriory.org.uk/news-listing
Lewes Archaeological group:  http://lewesarchaeology.org.uk and go to ‘Lectures’
Friends of Lewes:  http://friends-of-lewes.org.uk/diary/
Lewes Priory School Memorial Chapel Trust:  https://www.lewesprioryschoolmemorialchapeltrust.org/

Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/LewesHistoryGroup            

Please note: this Bulletin is being put on the website one month after publication. Alternatively you can receive the Bulletin by email as soon as it is published, by becoming a member of the Lewes History Group, and renewing your membership annually

1.    Next meeting: 9 September 2024, Alexandra Loske, ‘Turner & Constable in Sussex’

2.    Sussex Archaeological Collections volume 161

3.    Lewes Heritage Open Days (by Chris Taylor)

4.    Lewes Churches: two talks on Friday 4 October

5.    Living in Tudor and Stuart Sussex c.1500-1700

6.    The career of Edmund Dudley

7.    The Mechanics Institution

8.    Lewes entries from ‘Sussex in the Twentieth Century’

9.    Siegfried Sassoon in Lewes

10.  Farrow’s Bank, 195 High Street, Lewes (by Chris Grove)

11.  Arnold Berry, artist

12.  Lewes Bus Station

1.    Next Meeting                7.30 p.m.            King’s Church        Monday 9 September

       Alexandra Loske        Turner & Constable in Sussex 

In her talk Alexandra Loske will explain why these two great painters came to Sussex, compare their styles and choice of subject matter, and place them into the wider context of landscape painting in British art, as well as the aesthetic ideas and ideals of the picturesque and the sublime. Her talk, illustrated by examples of their local work, will finish by considering whether some more contemporary Sussex artists see themselves in the tradition of Constable and Turner.

Dr Loske is an art historian, writer and museum curator who lives in Lewes and completed her PhD in Art History at the University of Sussex in 2014. She now combines being a curator at the Royal Pavilion and a Research Associate at the University of Sussex.

2.        Sussex Archaeological Collections volume 161

Sussex Archaeological Collections volume 161, nominally the volume for 2023, appeared recently, and includes three articles of Lewes interest. The first is a detailed description by Jaime Kaminski of the ‘near Lewes hoard’, the extraordinary collection of Bronze Age items discovered by a metal detectorist at a ‘near Lewes’ site identified only as on Glynde Estate land overlooking the Ouse Valley. We heard an account of this remarkable discovery from Jane Clark, the local Finds Liaison Officer, in her talk to us just over a year ago.

Volume 161 also includes an important and comprehensive account of the contribution to the Sussex economy of the many private leisure estates created in the Sussex Weald in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, authored by Lewes-based Historian Sue Berry.

Finally Frances Stenlake contributes an account of the social and political life of the non-conformist photographer Frederick Douglas Miller. While F. Douglas Miller spent most of his life in Haywards Heath, many of his Edwardian postcards feature Lewes and the surrounding villages, and he had family connections to the town. His grandfather Edward Miller was a Hailsham chemist who established himself as one of the early-Victorian Lewes photographers, while his father, the artist Frederick Miller, grew up here. F. Douglas Miller’s wife was born in Brighton, but his mother-in-law, Emily Pocock, was a native of Lewes.

3.         Lewes Heritage Open Days                                                               (by Chris Taylor) 

Lewes History Group will once again be represented at this year’s Heritage Open Days on 14 and 15 September. As in previous years we will put on an exhibition of general information about our activities and showcase some of the research done by members over the past 12 months.

This will include work in preparation for the next publication in our Street Stories series – Station Street – which we hope to publish next spring. The author, Debby Matthews, will be at the exhibition in Lewes House on the Saturday afternoon (14 September). She would be pleased to talk to anyone who has information, stories or pictures relevant to the history of Station Street (formerly St Mary’s Lane).          

   

This 21 July 1907 postcard image shows a view by James Cheetham of a procession down Station Street, past the Lansdown Arms.

4. Lewes Churches: two talks on Friday 4 October

There will be two talks by Sue Berry on ‘The Story of our Lewes Churches’ and Peter Varlow on ‘St Thomas a Becket, “Lewes Hidden Gem”’ at 7.30 p.m. on Friday 4 October 2024 in Cliffe Church Hall. Book tickets (£7) via https://LewesChurchesTalks.eventbrite.co.uk.

5. Living in Tudor and Stuart Sussex c.1500-1700

The Sussex School of Archaeology and History are organising a study day for Saturday 12 October 2024 at the Kings Church Building, Brooks Road, Lewes. A series of expert speakers will explore how people in the Tudor and Stuart periods made a living, what they wore, where they lived and worshipped, and how they were helped if they became very poor. Key events included the closure of the monasteries by Henry VIII, the emergence of England as a Protestant nation, the attempt by Spain to invade England and the failure of the Spanish Armada, the English Civil War and Commonwealth, and the restoration of the Stuarts as monarchs. The course fee is £30 (£15 for online attendance) and booking via http://www.sussexarchaeology.org/tudor-stuarts-programme.

6. The career of Edmund Dudley

Edmund Dudley was born in Sussex in 1462. He was reportedly educated by the monks of Lewes Priory, and then sent by the prior to Oxford University before training as a lawyer at Gray’s Inn. In 1491 he entered Parliament, representing first Lewes and later the county of Sussex. Gaining the patronage of King Henry VII, he became one of his key ministers, and was appointed President of the Council. According to an unsympathetic historian of the day, Dudley was perfectly qualified to put into effect his master’s rapacious and tyrannical inclinations, and prey upon his defenceless subjects, using the forms of justice and the supportive authority of the king to oppress the innocent.

Dudley’s usual practice kept the appearance of the law, handing his victims formal indictments. They were then committed to prison, but never actually brought to trial. To recover their liberty they had to pay heavy fines, really ransoms, called ‘mitigations and compositions’. He also sold offices, wardships, licences to marry wealthy widows, and pardons for real or imagined offences, from treason downwards. The main end of the king and his minister was to bring everyone under the lash of their authority. Over £50,000 p.a. was collected for the royal treasury – some accounts say over £100,000 p.a. Dudley himself grew wealthy too. On his deathbed the king was seized by remorse – but not sufficiently to actually stay the hands of Dudley and his other ministers.

Just three days after the succession of King Henry VIII, Dudley and another of his father’s ministers were arrested and confined to the Tower of London, and in 1510 they were beheaded on Tower Hill. The supposed reason was not for the crimes of which they were actually guilty, but on trumped up charges that they had conspired against the sovereign. Thus, judged the unsympathetic historian, “In those times justice was equally violated whether the king sought power and riches or courted popularity.”

Edmund Dudley’s eldest son, aged only six at his father’s execution, found favour with Henry VIII and was created Duke of Northumberland. During the reign of Edward VI he became the effective ruler of the country, but his promotion of Lady Jane Grey brought him his own appointment with the executioner on Tower Hill. His grandson was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I.

Source: W.E. Baxter, ‘Guidebook to Lewes’, 6^th edition (1852) [the only source for the statement that Edmund Dudley was educated at Lewes Priory]; Dictionary of National Biography; https://allthingsrobertdudley.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/edmund-dudley1.pdf, https://theyorkhistorian.com/2016/09/19/the-rise-and-fall-of-edmund-dudley-the-hawk-of-henry-vii/ .

7.         The Mechanics Institution

From Mark Antony Lower, ‘Handbook for Lewes’ (2^nd edition), 1852

 “This useful institution was founded in 1825, for the purpose of diffusing among the operatives of the town a taste for reading and scientific pursuits. It is far, however, from being limited to mechanics, and its list of members includes the names of many professional gentlemen, merchants and tradesmen. The building stands on the site of the theatre, and contains a commodious lecture room and a library, with a handsome committee-room on the first floor, in which is a small museum of natural history. Lectures, principally on scientific subjects, are delivered on alternative Wednesday evenings during the winter. The library contains 3,000 volumes, comprising many standard works in most departments of literature and science, and there is a very good collection of apparatus for philosophical experiments, with a few models, geological specimens, etc. The number of members is at present 264. The subscription of 2s 0d per quarter entitles members to all the privileges of the institution; and strangers are admitted to the lectures at a very modest charge of 6d each. In the committee-room the Board of Guardians hold their weekly meetings. 

8.         Lewes entries from ‘Sussex in the Twentieth Century’

Below are three more Lewes entries from William Thomas Pike’s 1910 book ‘Sussex in the Twentieth Century’. Today we would call such an enterprise vanity publishing.

9.         Siegfried Sassoon in Lewes

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon is best known as a Great War poet. He was born in 1886 at Matfield in Kent, where he grew up in the house built by Harrison Weir, another writer with a Lewes connection [see Bulletin no.83]. He was the son of a Jewish banker who was disinherited when he married a non-Jewish wife, but his father fled his wife and three young sons when Siegfried was aged four and died of TB when he was nine. Siegfried’s first name came not from any German background, but from his mother’s love of Wagner. As a young man he was educated at Eton and Cambridge and had a trust fund that provided him with an income of £600 p.a., so while he had no need to seek employment, he was not as wealthy as many of his friends. In the 1911 census, aged 24, he lived in Kent with his widowed mother and gave ‘literature’ as his occupation.

In the years before the Great War he often hunted with the Southdown Hunt, whose master was his school friend Norman Wilfred Loder – in his post-war fictionalised autobiography ‘Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man’ he appears as ‘Sherston’ and Loder as ‘Milden’, while Lewes is ‘Downfield’. A transforming experience of the shy and solitary ‘Sherston’ is his winning a point to point race, and Sassoon is remembered as having won a members’ race in the hunt races at Cooksbridge Farm.

When the Great War was imminent Sassoon came to Lewes and enlisted as a trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry, bringing with him the horse Cockbird, on which he had won the race. This cavalry territorial unit, primarily intended for home defence and suppressing civil disorder, will have included many men he knew from his time with the hunt. He stayed at Lewes House with his friend E.P. Warren, and the Yeomanry’s drill hall was on Watergate Lane.

He did not remain for long in the Sussex Yeomanry. He re-enlisted as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, served fearlessly in the trenches in France and was awarded the Military Cross. His disenchantment with the mass casualties of the war is reflected in his poetry, and in another postwar book, ‘Memoirs of an Infantry Officer’. He lived until 1967, reaching the age of 80.

Sources:  https://runningoutoftime570605305.wordpress.com/2020/10/22/siegfried-sussex-yeomanry-and-poppies/; Wikipedia; Familysearch.

10.         Farrow’s Bank, 195 High Street, Lewes                                       (by Chris Grove)

Founded in 1904 by Thomas Farrow, Farrow’s Bank opened a branch at 182 High Street on 28 June 1909. On 19 June 1911, the branch advertised that it had moved to 195 High Street, Lewes. The bank also had branches in Hove, Brighton, Worthing, Shoreham, Newhaven, and across the whole country. The bank was also called The Sussex Land Bank.

Farrow himself lived at Dewbrook, Hadlow Down, and operated the Sussex Land Bank from its branch in Lewes. The bank is infamous for its fraudulent activity which led to it crashing in 1920 with the prosecution and conviction for fraud of Thomas Farrow as its Chairman, the bank’s deputy Chair, and its Chief Accountant. Thomas Farrow was sentenced to four years in prison. 

Farrow was born in Catton, near Norwich, in 1862. He qualified as a solicitor and then, after moving to Surrey, worked as personal secretary to W.H. Smith, the leader of the House of Commons. He was also personal secretary to Robert Yerburgh, the president of the Agricultural Banks Association. He wrote a book that was critical of bankers and the manner in which they served the public in 1895, and set up the Mutual Credit and Deposit Bank in 1901, followed by Farrow’s Bank in 1904.

As regards the Sussex Land Bank, a letter to the Editor of the Sussex Express published on 28 April 1911 raised early questions about how the business was run. Henry C. Devine, author of ‘People’s Co-operative Banks’, asked why Farrow had said that the Sussex Land Bank would be “entirely independent” of his bank, while immediately afterwards in Farrow’s Bank Gazette (the shareholders’ organ) under the title of “Our new agricultural department,” it was stated that it was being established by the directors of Farrow’s Bank as a “department in connection with the branch at Lewes”.

He went on to note that the new bank named as patrons over seventy Sussex noblemen, MPs, Magistrates, chairmen of public bodies and landowners. He also questioned why Farrow had said that the new bank was not to be run on a co-operative basis when it had said that the institution was to be conducted upon the lines of the successful Continental Land Banks, which were known to be mainly co-operative mortgage credit institutions, or under state supervision with special safeguards and other beneficial features.

Farrow’s Bank focused on small savers and borrowers, offering higher rates of interest for savers and more generous terms to borrowers. It also opened for longer hours than other banks, which made it popular. An article in the Sussex Express entitled ‘Farrow’s Bank and the Budget’, refers to it as ‘the People’s Bank’ offering what it describes as gilt-edged Popular Deposit Notes paying three to five per cent interest tax free, and redeemable on demand. These terms were attractive and the bank grew rapidly while reporting high profits. However the bank was actually losing money, which it hid in its balance sheet by overvaluing its assets such as agricultural land.

Farrow attempted to sell the bank in 1920 to a US investment bank but their due diligence exposed that the bank was insolvent and it then crashed. Creditors received five shillings in the pound and its depositors, three shillings and sixpence in the pound.

Over the twelve years up to its failure, the bank had in reality lost over £1 million, despite reporting good profits, paying dividends, and transferring claimed surpluses to reserves. There were widespread reports in the press of those who lost money and at least one example of someone who took their own life as a result of these losses. There must have been many in Lewes who lost money but, surprisingly, there are no reports in the local newspapers naming any victims. Thomas Farrow himself died at the age of 72 in August 1934 at his cottage in Easthampnett, near Chichester.

11.       Arnold Berry, artist

12.       Lewes Bus Station

Further plans for the re-development, or perhaps more accurately the over-development, of the Lewes Bus Station site are now before the South Downs National Park planning committee. Despite the very clear public interest in the retention of exactly this type of facility at such a suitable central location, it seems unlikely that the National Park planners have the appetite to resist the profit-motivated developers, or that they would be supported by the planning inspectorate were they to try.

However, those with an interest in the history of this site now have the opportunity to purchase on ebay a plethora of photographs that record the use of the site for this public purpose throughout the second half of the 20^th century. The example below is stated to date from 1973. Do we have members with an interest in recording the history of this site, and ensuring that an accessible record survives?

Another town centre site that has languished derelict for decades but now attracted the attention of developers is the riverside warehouse and wharf last used by the Parsons Brothers (later Wenban Smith) timber business. Plans for its redevelopment are now being drawn up, and a Facebook group has been established in the hope of being able to input into this process, so that it includes perhaps a riverside wharf and some public space, along with the inevitable luxury apartments.

See: https://www.facebook.com/groups/leweseastgatewharf

John Kay                                             01273 813388                                       johnkay56@gmail.com 

Contact details for Friends of the Lewes History Group promoting local historical events
Sussex Archaeological Society:  http://sussexpast.co.uk/events
Lewes Priory Trust:  http://www.lewespriory.org.uk/news-listing
Lewes Archaeological group:  http://lewesarchaeology.org.uk and go to ‘Lectures’
Friends of Lewes:  http://friends-of-lewes.org.uk/diary/
Lewes Priory School Memorial Chapel Trust:  https://www.lewesprioryschoolmemorialchapeltrust.org/

Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/LewesHistoryGroup            
Twitter:   https://twitter.com/LewesHistory