If you stroll down Gallows Bank today, the likelihood is that you are either going to the church or the pub.
If you were a churchgoer, then it’s probable that up until 1831 you would have heard the creaking of the gallows, perhaps even have dodged a dangling body as it swung like a pendulum in the early winter wind.
The path from the centre of Lewes to the 7th century church of Saint John sub Castro dates back to Roman times. Gallows Bank, an area beside the path now occupied by cottages, was where the hangman regularly hanged villains who dared to defy the authority of Rome, the strict laws of Saxon Kings or the conquering Normans, or later on the righteous justice of Victorian England.
It was a good place for the gallows, because our forefathers believed that seeing a miscreant hanging by the neck would act as a deterrent and Gallows Bank was high enough that the body could be seen for miles.
When I was about 15, I cycled down from the Midlands with a school chum to Eastbourne, to spend a summer of sand, sex and sangria in the south coast sun.
Okay, I guess the sex was imaginary and the sangria quaffed only behind tightly pulled curtains, but the sand was plentiful, despite the stony beaches.
As we neared Eastbourne, aching and saddle sore, we saw a sign pointing to Lewes.
‘Ah,’ said my classmate, ‘that’s a hanging town, Lewes’. And so it was.
Lewes had an Assizes in Saxon times and still has one today in the shape of a Crown Court. The ‘big drop’ was briefly experienced by hundreds of souls at Gallows Bank for over a thousand years, and its prison has played host to colourful murderers, thieves and vagabonds since it was built in 1853.
Prisoners in Norman times were held in a King’s Prison, which was in Lewes Castle. The Sheriff dropped the criminals off at the front gate, but security was so lax, they could disappear through a back door and scarper off into the forest, or down the River Ouse to the coast.
This led to vaults under the old Star Inn being turned into dungeons. Their steps can still be seen outside the inn, now the Town Hall, through a glass panel in the pavement. Some 17 religious Martyrs were led there in 1556 before being burned to death by Bloody Queen Mary. As cells were in short supply, some of them were even held in the wine cellar of The White Hart.
Several places acted as prisons after that. One was just inside the old West Gate, and a House of Corrections was erected in Cliffe.
Public pressure saw a purpose-built jail erected in 1793, this held the town’s prisoners until the present prison opened on the edge of town in 1853.
Parts of the old jail can be seen opposite Lewes Little Theatre, off North Street. It remained intact until being pulled down in 1963.
Being banged up in this prison was no picnic. It had a treadmill and seventy very cramped, tiny cells. There was no heating and the bitterly cold cells took the lives of 28 Russian-Finnish prisoners during the Crimea War of 1853-56.
These prisoners became famous, as Czar Nicholas I sent sixpence to each of them to buy hot cross buns at Easter. His heir, Alexander II, built a monument to the dead in the Saint John sub Castro churchyard. The obelisk is still cared for today by the Russian government. These prisoners were more recently the subject of an opera performed in Lewes in 2007.
The ratings, mostly Finns, suffered the privations of jail, while Russian officers moved freely around the town and were prized guests at dinners, dances and parties in the town, possibly because English soldiers had two left feet.
It is ironic that, just down the road, the new Lewes Prison opened its doors to (or clanged them shut on, depending on your vantage point) 300 Finnish grenadiers from the same war. They were the prison’s first inhabitants and, after a short incarceration, were repatriated and never heard of again.
So it was that the prison we see today began its life. And what a life it has been. The prison’s list of inmates reads like a “Who’s Who” of criminality. After a ding-dong battle with Chichester which lasted for centuries, Lewes was permanently awarded the Sussex Assizes in 1790 (later becoming a Crown Court). The ‘new’ prison took over from Gallows Bank, where the last public hanging took place, in 1831.
Lewes has a long track record of being at the centre of famous criminal trials, and this remains true up to the present day.
A Lewes coroner examined both the victims of Jack the Ripper and unfortunately the crippled Elephant Man. In 1799, a 17-year-old girl was sentenced to hang after being found guilty of killing her newborn son. The hanging was in public and was apparently enjoyed by the locals in the same way as a country fair.
The Court has heard many infamous cases, such as those of the evil acid bath murderer, John George Haig, the ‘Peaky Blinder’ gangs who terrorised Lewes Race Course, and the Brighton Railway killers of Victorian times, who famously kept a body hidden for weeks before the smell gave it, and them, away.
The prison, as well as hosting its own ghost, has held, at various times, the revolutionaries of the Irish rebellion, De Valera and Lawless, the Kray Twins and Mick Jagger. George Witton, charged with shooting Boer War prisoners and whom Winston Churchill helped free, was held there. His story is told in the 1980 movie ‘
Breaker Morant’.
All of these foul deeds are well documented, and each has a twist in the tail. Unlocking the doors of the prison will reveal even more. But not until the murky case of the poisoned onion pie is told, and that won’t be until the next issue!