England · Partial ruin
Lewes Castle
Lewes Castle is a medieval motte-and-bailey castle in Lewes, East Sussex, notable for having two mottes. It sits on a man-made grassy mount north of the town high street and is built from local limestone and flint. Substantial masonry shell-keeps and curtain walls with towers date from the 12th–14th centuries.
Its prime
1340
Today
Partial ruin
As it stood in 1340
What Lewes Castle looked like in its prime.
A double-motte silhouette: two raised artificial mounds close together, each topped by a stone shell keep, one a taller, tower-like keep and the other an irregular, crenellated shell; curtain walls and short towers descend the slopes. Construction is visibly of local pale limestone and darker flint blocks. The castle crowns a steep grassy mound above the town, with terraced stone retaining walls and paths leading from the high street to the battlements, showing exposed medieval masonry.
Its story
The story of Lewes Castle.
Bray Castle and the Gap in the South Downs
William de Warenne, 1st Earl of Surrey, set his castle above the point where the River Ouse cuts through the South Downs, the gap held by the towns of Lewes and Cliffe. Originally called Bray Castle, it was raised on a man-made mount just north of the Lewes high street and built from local limestone and flint. Warenne gave it two mottes rather than one: Brack Mount, completed shortly after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and the Keep, completed in the late eleventh century. Lincoln is the only other castle in England built to that plan.
The mottes would originally have carried wooden palisades. These were replaced with masonry shell keeps at the start of the twelfth century, and the bailey was given a stone wall with towers.
Riding Out to Simon de Montfort, 1264
In 1264 soldiers left the castle to engage Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Lewes. Work on the defences continued through the same era: towers were added to one of the shell keeps in the thirteenth century, and a barbican gate was added in the fourteenth.
The Last de Warenne, 1347
John de Warenne, the seventh earl and the last of his line, died without issue in 1347 and was buried in Lewes Priory. His title passed to his nephew Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel.
The Antiquarians and the Wall That Fell in 2019
The Sussex Archaeological Society leased the castle from 1850; in 1922 Charles Thomas-Stanford acquired it and gifted it to the society. The site had been scheduled as a monument in 1915, and its fabric was listed Grade I in 1952.
Shortly after midday on 11 November 2019 a stretch of curtain wall about ten metres square, reported at the time to weigh some 600 tonnes, collapsed onto an adjacent house and garden. Emergency services searched the site and found no casualties. The Sussex Archaeological Society said the fallen stretch was privately owned and one of the last surviving parts of the curtain wall, and that the parts it owned were checked independently each year; the castle was closed as a precaution.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1340.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Lewes Castle, including 2 interiors: brack mount (first motte), shell keep interior, keep motte, shell keep interior. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Clans who held Lewes Castle.
The families that held Lewes Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Warenne
Built by William de Warenne, 1st Earl of Surrey, after 1066 and held by the de Warenne earls until John, the 7th Earl, died without issue in 1347.
Nearby
