Plumpton Racecourse is one of the smallest in the country and therefore offers great views across the whole course in its 16 racedays between September and May. Continuing the views theme, Ditchling Beacon is the highest point in East Sussex and the perfect landmark to take in the South Downs area of Lewes. Take a family day out at Drusillas Park , widely known as the best small zoo in Europe, less than 10 miles from Lewes. Take a trip into Eastbourne just 15 miles from Lewes to enjoy time by the sea.
Book Tickets. Video Visit East Sussex. What's Nearby. Eating Out. A converted 19thC candle factory housing variety of different craft workshops. Climb the zig-zag steps of this year old Norman castle for stunning views of Sussex. An 18thC landscaped walled herb garden with many statues and a gazebo. The herbs are…. A Tudor house with Georgian additions in downland park setting.
Important English and…. With its beautiful woodland walks and extensive open lands, Stanmer Park is just as…. Lewes is a great place to shop with so many independent, antique and quirky shops. Lewes also boasts a working brewery situated in the heart of the town. If you are visiting on a Tuesday, you may be lucky enough to see the Harveys dray horses delivering the beer. Other highlights include the authentically furnished kitchen and the garden which uses traditional plants and Tudor planting schemes.
Lewes Castle and Barbican House Museum High above the medieval streets stands Lewes Castle, begun soon after by William de Warenne as his stronghold in Sussex and added to over the next years, culminating in the magnificent Barbican.
Steep climbs to the top of this and the adjacent keep are rewarded with spectacular views. Southover Grange Gardens Grange gardens were once the private garden of the grange built in by William Newton and briefly the home of John Evelyn the diarist. The gardens are a little piece of heaven on earth right in the centre of Lewes town, a lovely peaceful thing to do!
It is a delightful labyrinth of nooks and crannies including a peace garden, fountain and disused well. Impressive interpretation panels allow you to walk in the footsteps of medieval monks and imagine how the buildings once looked. A recreated herb garden grows plants that monks would have used for medicinal, culinary and ceremonial purposes.
Markets Lewes has a number of small and larger markets happening in the town. There is a small food market selling fresh, local produce, takeaway nibbles and light meals suitable for a picnic.
The north overhang is now covered by a shopfront but on the east the shaped joists which carry the upper framing are intact, with a bracket-post at the south end and another intermediate one. The room on the first floor the solar is of two roof bays, with a heavy chamfered oak truss forming a threecentred arch. The tie-beam has a segmental curve which mitres with two curved brackets, which again mitre with the wall-posts, leaving two small pierced spandrels.
The room is ceiled above the tie-beam, but above is a king-post with the usual four-way struts. In the external wall of this room overlooking the lane are three panels of oak 14th-century tracery, with two slender shafts and caps, trefoil cusped heads, and a row of pierced quatrefoils above. Remains of the jambs of a similar panel were found in the adjoining house No.
South of this medieval wing is a small Elizabethan building of two stories, with a three-light oak window looking east, with moulded frame, and above it a section of a moulded oak wall-plate.
The main part of the house to the west, which no doubt contained the hall, shows no ancient features, but to the west of this is a room with a 16th-century stone fire-place with arched head and chamfered jambs, now mostly hidden by a modern mantel-piece.
In the basement of this part of the house the medieval masonry and some stone stairs are intact. At the west corner of the next lane, St.
Swithin's, which leads to a lane parallel with the High Street, called Steward's Inn, fn. Swithin's House No. It has a good entrance door with Ionic pilasters, level entablature, and fanlight of Chippendale Gothic character. The interior is panelled and has enriched fire-places, overmantels, and cornices of the period. The rooms of the upper floors are panelled with Elizabethan oak panelling, taken doubtless from the house formerly on the site.
At the west corner of Bull Lane is Bull House, a medieval building formerly an inn, and behind it is the Westgate Unitarian Chapel, which is the shell of an Elizabethan house erected by Sir Henry Goring in Bull House fn. It is of three stories with a basement, the front room having heavy oak joists that originally projected over the street to carry an overhanging gable, since cut back. The heavy 15th-century joists continue southwards over the present staircase hall and are tenoned into a large moulded beam within the livingroom beyond.
This room was probably a hall, open to the roof, but was floored over at the beginning of the 16th century with stop-chamfered joists of small section. At the same time a large chimney-stack was inserted, which has the remains of a moulded chimneybeam.
In the restoration of the house in a stone shield bearing the Pelham arms was found and is now fixed in the chimney-breast. In the east wall is a blocked oak Elizabethan window. The rooms on the first and second floors retain their massive oak posts and beams, of king-post construction, the front room on the first floor alone having joists of the early 16th century.
Projecting from the east front of the medieval building is a structure of Elizabethan date which probably formed the porch to Goring's house. It is timberframed above and overhangs the ground floor, and has two carved oak Satyrs which act as brackets, a female figure at the external angle, and a similar male bearded figure where it joins the main building. The house, which was for some years the residence of Thomas Paine, then excise-man and later author of The Rights of Man , is now vested in the Sussex Archaeological Trust.
The Elizabethan house has been gutted and reroofed, its four external walls alone remaining. They are faced with flint, with stone quoins and a plinth with stone weathering. The building is a rectangle 58 ft.
The southern half of this is spanned by a roof with gables to the west and to the east overlooking Bull Lane. An original blocked window of three lights is preserved in the eastern gable, the rest of the fenestration having been altered to suit the chapel, which has a single window of three lights above and below a central transom, formed from the stonework of the old windows, the position of which can be traced in the flint facing.
The wall of the northern half of the building remains for little more than half its height and retains an entrance doorway with stone jambs and four-centred head. The upper story of the porch building is plastered and has twin gables towards Bull Lane. West of Bull House is a small entrance court now serving the chapel and bounded on the west by No. The east wall of the house is faced with green-sandstone from the town wall, on the line of which it stands, and some of the stones of the West Gate are incorporated in the entrance to the chapel.
It has a wing on the west side with bold projections of both the first and second stories towards the street, the upper overhang being carried by curved oak brackets.
The first floor overhangs Keere Street, the framing being supported by shaped oak joists. There is a large open fire-place within, and some small portions of 16th-century panelling. In the framing on the High Street side is fixed an old milestone recording the distances of 50 miles from the Standard in Cornhill, 49 to Westminster Bridge, and 8 miles to Brighthelmston.
This stone was formerly in the wall of the house now demolished on the opposite side of the way. The parish boundary between St. Michael's and St. Anne's passes between Nos. The front room is panelled with Elizabethan oak panelling and has an overmantel of two arched panels, with fluted arch-moulds of the same date, over an elaborate Georgian fire-place.
There is a good 18th-century summerhouse in the garden. Antioch House No. It is a large house very much altered from time to time, but retains some Elizabethan stone windows. The date occurs on a rainwater head and on a south projection. On the first floor over a chimney-breast is an earlythcentury wall-painting of a sporting scene. Rotten Row fn. Antioch Street, the next turning, appears formerly to have led down to Southover, but had been closed before , fn.
Anne's Rectory No. Peter Westout. Anne's House No. It has the date with initials I. The same initials for John Apsley and the date are on the garden wall. Between this and the churchyard of St. Anne's Church are a number of 18th-century houses and cottages, among which the chief are Hill Lodge No.
Michael's Nos. Opposite St. Anne's Church on the north side of the street is Ireland's Lane, mentioned by John Rowe as ' alias Bukettwin where the bounderstone of this Burrowe lyeth. The part of this house towards the street is Elizabethan, altered and furnished with new windows in the 18th century.
The central projecting porch has an original stone doorway with four-centred moulded arch and jambs, moulded stops and in the spandrils anno The arch is within a framework composed of an entablature resting on two Doric columns and within the porch is an original moulded oak frame to the entrance. The initials are those of Thomas Pelland, beer-brewer, and at that time the house was an inn with the sign of the Vine.
The main scheme is a trellis with interlacing lozenges at the intersections, the spaces being filled with floral patterns, and the frequent repetition of bunches of grapes. At the top is a broad frieze of finely drawn amorini and birds in the midst of a running floral pattern. This tablet must have been brought to the house since the Shelley family first occupied it in They remained until and during their occupation large additions were made on the north front, mostly during the 18th century.
These rooms are excellent examples of the Georgian period. The next building eastwards is the Grammar School, a modern structure on the site of the Chantry House, the endowment of Sherman's Chantry in St. Mary Jenkins of Chelsea to the Lewes Grammar School and served as the schoolmaster's house until the school was moved here from Southover. Little Owsden No. In the former, which is largely timber-framed, is some good oak panelling c. On a gable looking north is the date Tyne House No.
Anne's parish. Westgate Street or White Lion Lane, named from an inn of which records exist since the time of Queen Elizabeth and now being demolished, turns to the north outside the town walls. Within No. The whole building measured 68 ft. The external face of the town wall alined with the western arch of the gate, and its junction with the bastion can be seen.
The wall stands for some 10 ft. The passage-way mounts by means of steps the earth bank, part of the Saxon defence to the western approach to the town. Next to St. Michael's Church eastwards is an old house, built in the 16th century, which formerly belonged to Lord Howard of Effingham.
The centre house, Castle Place, was the residence of Dr. Gideon Mantell, the discoverer of the Iguanodon. Barbican House No.
It retains a stone fire-place on the ground floor, with four-centred arched head and moulded jambs, which in its spandrils has leaf sprays, the initials I. In the ceiling of this room are contemporary moulded oak beams, and similar beams occur upon the first floor.
The upper part of the main stair has spiral balusters of the time of Charles II and the firstfloor landing has an enriched ceiling of the same date. The framing of the roofs and of the upper story is of heavy oak of the latter part of the 16th century. A room on the first floor is panelled with Tudor panelling from Bishopstone Manor House. This is an oak-framed building of the latter part of the 16th century and contains a considerable amount of Elizabethan oak panelling. In the rebuilt front of the Rainbow Tavern No.
Pope's Entry passes under the building to the Castle Ditch where, built into a stable, is the arch of a 16th-century doorway enriched with guilloche ornament.
Michael's parish have been built as a replica of the old building fn. A large panelled room, with two free Corinthian columns, two marble chimney-pieces, and an interesting staircase have been preserved from Newcastle House and incorporated in the building.
The County Hall was erected in from the designs of Mr. John Johnston of Camden Town. It is faced with Portland stone and has an open colonnade now partly filled in on the ground floor between two wings of which the lower parts are in rusticated masonry.
The first floor is occupied by a large room 60 ft. Above the three central windows are panels carved in relief, and the whole building is crowned by a simple modillion cornice.
Fisher Street fn. Its 14th-century undercroft probably belonged to the house of Robert Spicer, M. The principal compartment, 46 ft.
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