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1. Next Meeting: 9 Sep 2025: John Bleach, ‘Medieval churches in and around Lewes’
2. Memories of Lewes Bus Station (by Ruth Thomson)
3. Station Street (formerly St Mary’s Lane) by Debby Matthews
4. Lewes Heritage Open Weekend
5. Memories of Lewes, 1939-1945 (by Colin Dolloway)
6. An early postcard of the White Hart
7. The proposed new railway entrance into Lewes
8. A Hill House Hospital brooch (by Philip Pople)
9. A 1930s advertisement for Lewes Motors
10. Saxon origins for Cliffe Church? (by Peter Varlow)
1. Next Meeting 7.30 p.m. King’s Church Monday 8 September 2025
John Bleach The medieval churches in and around Lewes
Roman Christianity came late to Sussex, arriving with Wilfrid in the late-7th century, almost a century after Augustine’s mission to convert the English arrived in Kent. The see was established at Selsey, moving to Chichester only after the Norman Conquest. Several grants of land for the building of Sussex churches in the following centuries include an 8th century charter by which Ealdwulf, king of Sussex, responding to a request from one of his thegns, granted 16 hides in Stanmer, Lindfield and Burleigh to support a new monastery to serve God and St Michael. Domesday Book records that both before the Conquest and in 1086 what appears to be the same property was held by the Canons of Malling from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that there were seven sites in Lewes attached to this estate. While the authenticity of Ealdwulf’s charter is a matter for debate, it pre-dates by a century the establishment of King Alfred’s burgh of Lewes
Admission is free for members and there is no need to reserve your place. Everyone is very welcome, but there is an entry charge of £4 for non-members, with tickets available in advance via Ticketsource.co.uk/lhg.
2. Memories of Lewes Bus Station? (by Ruth Thomson)
Lewes Bus Station is now up for sale and its future is uncertain. Prompted by this, Ruth Thomson (one of the editors of Grown in Lewes) and a small group of researchers are planning to celebrate the bus station’s history from its inception to the present day as a souvenir of its once vibrant presence in the town.
We are keen to include bus users’ memories of the bus station (special journeys, tours, incidents, the newsagent, the information office, the cafe, etc.) and memorabilia (tickets, timetables, photographs, posters, leaflets, etc).
We are also keen to talk to anyone who worked at the bus station – whether as drivers, bus station officials, cafe workers, depot workers, kiosk staff or anyone else.
If you would like to contribute to this project, please contact Ruth at growninlewes@gmail.com
3. Station Street (formerly St Mary’s Lane) by Debby Matthews
This latest addition to the Lewes History Group’s Street Stories series summarises the results of years of research by Station Street resident Debby Matthews. It draws on a broad range of historical sources, including personal reminiscences, and is illustrated by many new photographs, sketches and maps. Copies will be for sale at £12.50 at our September meeting or at our Lewes House stall during the Heritage Open Weekend.
Copies are also available by mail order at leweshistory.org.uk/publications.
4. Lewes Heritage Open Weekend
Lewes History Group will once again be represented at this year’s Heritage Open Weekend (12- 14 September). As in previous years we will put on an exhibition of general information about our activities at Lewes House on 13-14 September and showcase some of the research done by members over the past year. We are continuing work on Victorian & Edwardian Lewes, and planning two new volumes in our Street Stories series, one on the much missed Lewes Bus station in Eastgate Street and the other on New Road, Westgate Street and Pipe Passage
We shall have on sale the latest publication in our Street Stories series – Station Street by Debby Matthews, as noted above. We shall also have available those other LHG publications still in print.
5. Memories of Lewes, 1939-1945 (by Colin Dolloway)
I was standing in our garden in Lewes and the window to the lounge was open. I heard the prime minister announce, “We have declared War on Germany”. It was 3rd September 1939. I had just turned 5 in July and was due to start school in August. I had no comprehension of what War meant. I was more concerned with carrying my gas mask which kept falling to the ground and tying up my shoelaces. About 2 months into the war, we had our first air raid. The wailing siren could be heard all over Lewes. So, we all slept in the cupboard under the staircase which was thought to be the safest place. After about 2 hours the ‘all clear siren’ went. I asked my parents “Is that the end of the war?” No such luck.
The infant school lasted 2 years. I can vividly remember watching from our garden the ‘dog fights’ above our house at 500-1000 ft. They were swirling around in the sky – Spitfires and Messerschmitt’s and it was quite exciting when a German plane fell out of the sky and into the ground. During the course of the war in a radius of 4 miles from Lewes as many as 42 planes crashed. There were more British planes limping back than German planes. I remember a small German plane had landed on the South Downs just behind us and the pilot came running down to a neighbour’s house with his arms raised and saying, “Don’t shoot me”.
At another time a wounded Halifax crash-landed a quarter of a mile away, half on a road and half on a bank. All the crew were OK. I took the opportunity of collecting a few parts for my ‘museum’. Then I heard early one morning that a Spitfire out of fuel landed on the Lewes Racecourse a quarter of a mile away. There were wires stretched across the course which were intended for German planes. The Spitfire had landed upside down. The pilot was OK. I have recently picked up that it was 27 October 1940. I was just 6 years old and had no fear that I was in a war zone! Then there was a whole month when Germany dropped bombs every night except on one night of rain. From our garden we could see at night a wide angle glow looking 50 miles north. That was London.
Then the USA joined the war 2 years after it had started. Then we saw masses of Flying Fortress bombers flying low on their way to Germany. The most impressive of planes were the 1000 bomber raid flying just overhead. They just kept coming and coming.
German rockets called VI’s or Doodle Bugs had a regular route one mile east of our house and aimed direction for London. One night it looked as if one was coming towards our house, but fortunately it changed direction again and landed on waste ground. They would come down when their fuel ran out. Usually we saw about 3 a day.
We only had a very small ration of sugar; I think about 2 ounces a week, so it wasn’t enough for tea. I didn’t take it after the war and never since, so during my life my body has not had to contend with processing one ton of sugar! Meat was hard to get so we bought whale meat. I quite liked it, but most people didn’t. Therefore, we made cages for 60 rabbits. They had a waterproof area for sleeping and the bottom had wire mesh. This enabled us to move the cages around the lawn so that they could eat the grass through the mesh. I made my first pocket money of £6 by selling rabbits to neighbours. I had several varieties of rabbits and got ‘Best on Show’ for a Blue Beveren. Then a few years later wild rabbits caught a disease called Myxomatosis which decimated them. They got swollen eyes and couldn’t see where they were going. It was a very sorry sight, and I would go over the Downs with a sharp stick to put them out of their misery.
I cycled to Hamsey railway crossing and I put a Penny on the track. Then the gates closed. A passenger train was coming at speed. I had a few very worrying moments that the train might be derailed! It flattened the coin to double the size. Great relief!
A friend and I had a hobby of collecting unused flares on the Downs, bullets galore and thunder flashes and small parachutes. We made fireworks out of the contents. That is until my father found them hidden under a tree in the garden! He was very angry.
Then one day I was walking with a friend along ‘Chalky Way’ (now an extension of Prince Edward’s Road) when a passer-by said, “The War is over”. Great excitement, street parties, fires in the middle of the roads and torchlight processions through the town.
Text written in 2020 by Colin Dolloway, then living in Durban, and passed on by Bill Kocher
6. An early postcard of the White Hart
This early Valentines postcard showing a coach and horses outside the White Hart has an undivided back, for the address only, so any message had to be written in the blank areas on the front of the card. This particular card was sent to a Miss Morphew at St John’s Rectory in the Wallands in December 1904 but the sender did not include any message, or even sign the card. St John’s Rectory was the home of Rev Arthur Pearson Perfect, Rector of St John-sub-Castro, and in the 1901 census his household included three servants, a cook, a parlourmaid and a housemaid. The latter, the junior of the three, was Esther Morphew, aged 17, who had come from Maresfield. A labourer’s daughter, she was still in service in 1921, aged 37 and the housemaid for the Rector of Maresfield. She was living near Hastings when she died, unmarried, in 1949, at the age of 66
7. The proposed new railway entrance into Lewes
The 15 March 1864 Sussex Advertiser reported that the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway had numerous bills before Parliament, one of which was to construct a new railway line into the town of Lewes. The new line would branch from the Uckfield line in the parish of Hamsey, pass through Malling and then cross the River Ouse to Billiter’s Brook, at the back of Messrs Parsons stone yard. It would then cross the High Street at the bottom of School Hill, to reach Lewes Station. The High Street would be crossed by an iron bridge, which would require the removal, amongst others, of the houses on the north side of the High Street occupied by the Misses Shergold and Mr Macrae (217 & 218 High Street). There was a gap on the south side of the High Street between Tabernacle and the Fitzroy Library, through which the line could pass.
The new line would make it more convenient to travel from Brighton to Uckfield, from where a railway was then being constructed to Tunbridge Wells. Under the existing arrangements all passengers from Uckfield had to change carriages at Lewes, but this inconvenience would be remedied by the new line.
Some objections were raised in Lewes against the new bridge. A deputation from the Lewes Commissioners and magistrates visited the LB&SCR chairman in his offices at London Bridge. It comprised Mr Burwood Godlee, Captain Williamson, Mr W.E. Baxter, Mr J. Smith, Mr Crosskey and Mr Blaker (clerk to the Commissioners). They made four objections.
- The first was that the proposed height between the road and the girders of the bridge was only 15 feet. They argued that it should be higher – at least 16 feet.
- The second was that the span of the bridge was planned to be only 13 feet, but they argued that the span should be the entire space between the houses on the two sides of the street – 41 feet 10 inches.
- The third was that it was proposed to lower the road under the bridge by 2 feet 6 inches, but that this would cause great inconvenience. It should be lowered by only 18 inches.
- That the bridge should be an ornamental structure, and not the plain construction proposed.
The railway company agreed to all four proposals, and on that highly satisfactory basis the deputation agreed not to oppose the Bill.
Many readers will remember that bridge, that so dominated the townscape in that part of Lewes. A century later, after my own first fleeting visit to the town, that was the impression that I carried away – and I lived in Manchester! How much worse would it have been, but for that deputation?
8. A Hill House Hospital brooch (by Philip Pople)
The Newcastle-based auctioneers Anderson & Garland, offered as lot 92 of their Militaria auction held on 20 August 2025 this garnet-set gold bar brooch engraved ‘Hill House Hospital, Oct 17, 1914’. It was offered in its original case, bearing the mark of a Tunbridge Wells goldsmith.
The Hill House Hospital for wounded soldiers was based at School Hill House, 33 High Street, during the Great War. This brooch was presumably intended for one of the nursing staff, rather than a patient. School Hill House was owned by the wealthy American Edward Perry Warren, who lived next door at Lewes House and sponsored the hospital. The 6 December 1918 Sussex Express recorded that the hospital opened on 4 October 1914 and closed in December 1918.
9. A 1930s advertisement for Lewes Motors
This site, most recently used as a police garage, is now to be redeveloped for housing.
10. Saxon origins for Cliffe Church? (by Peter Varlow)
St Thomas à Becket church in Cliffe is commonly cited as Norman in origin, but my new book suggests that it goes back to Saxon times. The 128-page ‘History of the Fabric and Furnishings of St Thomas à Becket Church, Cliffe’, points out that the Domesday Book audit in 1086 recorded 59 houses in Pevensey Rape held by William de Warenne, lord of Lewes Rape. This substantial settlement is identified in Colin Brent’s Pre-Georgian Lewes as being Cliffe.
Domesday said that 20 of the 59 houses were uninhabited, likely sacked by Norman troops in 1066 before crossing the river to assault the fortress-burh of Lewes itself. Thus, Cliffe was not a little hamlet but a sizeable Saxon community before the Conqueror arrived – thriving probably more on commerce than on agriculture. East-west travellers were using either a ford over the river, or an early bridge, and the navigable river was an artery of trade in domestic and imported goods shipped at its wharves for deliveries in and out of Lewes and its hinterland.
There were priests a-plenty who wouldn’t have neglected to establish at least a chapel in this industrious community: on Cliffe’s doorstep less than a mile away was the South Malling monastery first founded in about 765 by Aldulf, a prince or duke of the South Saxons, which had become a college of canons by Domesday. And South Malling was also a busy corner of the archbishop’s enormous Peculiar, the manor of Malling, that stretched all the way from Cliffe to the Kent border. Colin tells us that King Egbert granted the archbishop land at Malling in 838, and that this is quite possibly the manor recorded in Domesday. So the adjacent hive of Saxon administration included the archbishop’s stewards busy collecting rents, and the dean of the college running the ecclesiastical team with priests in the many Malling manor parishes including Cliffe – and it seems likely that the archbishop’s palace was established there too pre-1066.
This new book, with over 100 colour illustrations, describes the church’s transformations from medieval to Puritan to Victorian styles of worship, as well as providing a detailed tour of the interior. Appendices include a detailed look at the belfry and its oak bell-frame that may be coeval with the early 15th-century tower, and a useful guide to the masonry by geologist David Bone. A highlight is a Reeves photograph of the interior, with box pews and a fine Georgian reredos – Tom Reeves dates the image by its ‘wet collodion’ negative as mid-late 1850s to mid-1870s.
The book is on sale in the church (open every day), price £10 (which includes a £5 donation to the Church), and online via www.st-thomas-lewes.org.uk/history where there is also a free-to-view flip-book version.
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/
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