187 High Street, Lewes - 01273 483 448 lewes.tic@lewes.gov.uk

Lewes - Literally, 'injury', in a transferred topographical sense of a ravine or gap. This is where the River Ouse flows through a fissure to the sea. It has also been suggested that the name is OE hlaew (pl. hlaewes), 'burial mound/hill', with spellings reflecting a very early loss of initial h.

Lewes is the county town of East Sussex, England, a civil parish and is the centre of the Lewes local government district. The settlement has a history as a bridging point and as a market town, and today as a communications hub and tourist-orientated town. At the 2001 census it had a population of 15,988.

Archaeological evidence points to prehistoric dwellers and it is thought that the Roman settlement of Mutuantonis was here, quantities of artifacts having been discovered in the area. The Saxons built a castle here, having first constructed its motte as a defensive point over the river; they gave the town its name.

After the Norman invasion, Lewes was given by William the Conqueror to William de Warenne, 1st Earl of Surrey. He built Lewes Castle on the Saxon site; and he and his wife, Gundred also founded a Cluniac priory here in about 1081. Lewes was the site of a mint during the Late Anglo-Saxon period and thereafter a mint during the early years after the Norman invasion. In 1148 the town was granted a charter by King Stephen. The town became a port with docks along the Ouse.

The town was the site of the Battle of Lewes between the forces of Henry III and Simon de Monfort in the Second Barons’ War in 1264, at the end of which de Monfort's forces were victorious. The battle took place in fields now just west of Landport.

At the time of the Marian Persecutions of 1555–1557 Lewes was to witness the deaths of seventeen Protestant martyrs who were burnt at the stake in front of the Star Inn, now the Town Hall.

Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Lewes developed as the county town of East Sussex expanding beyond the line of the town wall and serving as a port and developing iron, brewing and ship building industries.

In 1846 the town became a railway junction with lines constructed from the north, south, and east to two railways stations. The development of Newhaven ended Lewes' period as a major port. Lewes became a borough in 1881.