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Lewes (/ ˈ l uː ɪ s / ⓘ) is the county town of East Sussex, England. [note 1] The town is the administrative centre of the wider district of the same name and the location of East Sussex County Council at the county hall. A traditional market town and centre of communications, in 1264 it was the site of the Battle of Lewes.
At the heart of rural Sussex lies the beautiful county town of Lewes - a mixture of the unusual and intriguing and so typically Sussex. Its medieval streets, old English churches and tiny twittens (a Sussex word for alleyway) allow visitors a glimpse into the true essence of bygone Lewes.
- Charleston
- Lewes Castle
- Cliffe High Street
- Glyndebourne
- South Downs
- Lewes Priory
- Southover Grange
- Monk’s House
- Barbican House Museum
- Anne of Cleves House
The artist couple Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant picked this large farmhouse in the village of Firle as their country home in 1916. Over the next 50 years the house would be a meeting place for the Bloomsbury group, a set of forward-thinking artists, writers and intellectuals made up of the likes of Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot. Bell and Grant wer...
A Norman motte-and-bailey stronghold, Lewes Castle was built within three years of the Battle of Hastings (1066), and for most of the Medieval period was controlled by the Earls of Surrey, descendants of the nobleman William de Warenne who fought at the battle. The castle was reinforced throughout that time but the precipitous mound is a Norman hol...
You may not find a lovelier high street in England than this east-to-west artery through the centre of Lewes. Cliffe High Street is on a bit of a slope, with a pedestrianised section at the top and a few narrow lanes and passages disappearing off to the sides. On this upper stretch there are views of the South Downs to stop you in your tracks, as w...
The landowner John Christie was a music aficionado, and after moving into the late-Medieval house at Glyndebourne began to host opera evenings in the inter-war years. This eventually led to a theatre being built on the grounds, upgraded in 1992 to a modern performance venue that can seat 1,200. The Glyndebourne Festival took off in the wake of the ...
Lewes rests in a stunning gap in the South Downs, a range of chalk hills in southeast of England roughly from Winchester to Eastbourne. This region became the UK’s newest national park in 2011 and is threaded by a National Trail. The route passes close by Lewes and you could walk a section to the little village of Southease, downriver on the Ouse, ...
In a park at the head of the Ouse Valley in the south of Lewes you can investigate the Grade I-listed ruins of Lewes’ Priory of St Pancras. This was a Cluniac priory, the first Cluniac house in England, founded around 1081. Nearly everything you see is from that time and the century that followed. It pays to remember that this site has been heavily...
There’s a spellbinding Elizabethan house within seconds of Lewes Station. Southover Grange was built in the 1570s using ashlar stone from the recently dissolved Lewes Priory. A private home for centuries, Southover Grange was visited by the Prince Regent in the 1790s when he came for the Lewes Races. The house is now home to Lewes’ Register Office ...
In the village of Rodmell, three miles south of Lewes is the 17th-century weatherboard cottage owned by Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard as a country retreat. They purchased Monk’s House in 1919 and while staying here entertained luminaries from the Bloomsbury Group like E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot, Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry. Monk’s House ...
Included in the same ticket as the castle is a museum in the Barbican House at the entrance to the site. The official name for this attraction is the Museum of Sussex Archaeology and there’s a spectrum of artefacts to view from the Stone Age to Medieval times. Among the finds are flint tools, pieces of pottery, jewellery and weapons, while there’s ...
The Sussex Archaeological Society also owns and operates a museum at the timber-framed Wealden hall house once owned by Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The house was raised in the 1400s, and although it was part of her annulment settlement the Queen never actually lived here. At any rate the building is a spectacular example of vernacular...
Lewes, town (parish), Lewes district, administrative county of East Sussex, historic county of Sussex, southeastern England. It lies at a gap in the South Downs and along the River Ouse where it is still tidal.
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This under-the-radar town in East Sussex, England is home to a number of great attractions, including a historic castle, priory ruins, a house belonging to a wife of Henry VIII, and beautiful streets. There’s a wealth of things to do and see here, and Lewes is an easy day trip from London.