Here is a fine basket-work Norman font, and
in the south aisle at the east end a vaulted chapel. To the north of
the chancel is a recessed tomb.
But it is not in the churches we have in Lewes that we shall to-day
find the symbol, as it were, of that old town, still so fair a thing,
which held the passage of the Ouse through the Downs and in the
thirteenth century witnessed the great battle in which Simon de
Montfort, mystic and soldier, defeated and took captive his king. For
that we must go to the Castle ruin that crowns Lewes as with a
battlement.
The Castle is reached from the High Street near St Michael's church by
the Castlegate. It was founded, as I have said, by the first De
Warenne, but the gate-house by which we enter is later, dating from
King Edward's time, the original Norman gate being within. The Castle
had two keeps, a rare feature. Only one of these remains, reached by a
winding steep way, and of this only two of the fine octagonal towers
are left to us. These two are thirteenth century works. From the
principal tower, now used as a museum, we may get the best view of the
famous battlefield under Mount Harry, one of the most famous sites of
the thirteenth century in England, for the battle that was fought
there seemed to have decided everything; in fact it decided nothing,
for its result was entirely reversed at Evesham by the military genius
of Prince Edward.
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