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Unlike Chichester at the other end of Sussex, Lewes
was of very little note in it's earliest days. By
Saxon times it was important enough to possess two
mints which issued silver coinage down to the reign
of Harold, but only after the Conquest does it
really emerge into history.
William I made the town his chief residence, erected
the castle on it's artificial mound, and founded the
great Priory of St. Pancras in Southover which
occupied a site of forty acres. The great church
alone was equal in size to most cathedrals,
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but at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1537
everything was levelled remorselessly to the ground.
The most significant event in the history of the
town was the battle of Lewes in 1264 when the
confederated Barons under Simon de Montfort defeated
the army of Henry III in a fiercely fought conflict
that raged from the Downs in the north-west to the
marshes of the River Ouse, a victory that can be
said to mark the beginning of representative
government.
In early times the area from Lewes southwards
was an estuary, with the adjacent marshlands
often flooded, through which the Ouse found it's
way into the channnel at the port of Seaford, a
member of the Cinque Ports at least as early as
1229. In the 16th century the river was
straightened and led into the sea at the village
of Meeching which became the New Haven.
Lewes today is one of the Souths most
interesting towns, healthily busy but no longer
forced to endure the detructive passage of
through traffic, which can now use the southern
by-pass or Cuilfail tunnel through the chalk
cliff behind South Street. It is still dominated
by the Castle (now the home of the Sussex
Archeaological Society) from which some
magnificent views can be obtained.
It is one of the few towns in the south-east
which still has its own privately owned brewery
whose real ale is served in the White Hart bars.
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