St Pancras Priory, Lewes: its Architectural Development to 1200

Summary

Despite its importance as a market in the reign of the Confessor, its 1300 hides in the Burghal Hidage, its two moneyers and two mints, its strategic position in the centre of Godwin country, Lewes appears to have played no part either in the struggle between the Godwins and the King, or in the events of 1066. Nor, artistically speaking, is there much to report. The political and social changes brought about by the Conquest are well known, but this is not true of the remarkable architectural and sculptural developments that occurred after 1066, the vast majority of which were the result of the establishment of the Cluniac priory of St Pancras.

The narrow High Street of this small town runs from west to east along a high ridge whence steep narrow lanes descend to the low-lying area of Southover where the priory was built. At the east end of the High Street, School Hill descends to Lewes or Cliffe Bridge, over which lies the suburb of Cliffe.

Lewes is situated on the River Ouse, which is tidal with a gradient so slight that much of Lewes is below the level of the high tides. At the end of the eleventh century when the priory was founded, the whole valley was probably a tidal inlet. Within the flood plain, there were higher areas that escaped and the priory was on one of these. It is referred to frequently as an ‘insula’. From this it would seem that, at times, anyway, the priory was surrounded, or partly surrounded, by water. It was not, of course, another Lindisfarne, nor was it likely to have been cut off completely from Southover; access was always possible across Hilly Fields, to the west, but one wonders whether priory structures at the Southover level were affected by flooding; the exterior wall, the Great Gateway complex were most at risk. The Ouse debouched into the sea at Seaford and the trade of the town depended on transport up the Ouse to Cliffe Bridge. Later in the medieval period, a shingle bar built up across the entrance to Seaford harbour, impeding navigation, but trade in the twelfth century is unlikely to have been affected adversely.