Church of St John sub Castro, Lewes

In the early 11th century, a church was built on the site of a Roman fort erected to guard a crossing over the Ouse, below which the river was navigable. The site was in the north-west corner of the walled town, one of which was later found to contain remains of human burials. The church came into the possession of the Cluniac Priory of St Pancras in 1121, and the earliest known reference to its relation to Lewes Castle (), presumably to distinguish it from the priory chapel at Southover, also dedicated to St John the Baptist, dates from 1190. William Camden's Britannia of 1586 reported the building "all desolate and beset with briers and brambles". Around that time the chancel was…

The new church was designed by George Cheesman in the Early English style, to include a rectangular aisled nave with no arcading, a short chancel, and a short embattled tower with castellated octagonal turrets, and constructed in knapped flint with red brick dressings. An apse was a later addition. Because of the limitations of the site, it was built on a north–south rather than the usual east–west orientation, and lies to the south of the original building. Though the local newspaper found the new construction "convenient and well-arranged", others were less impressed. Mark Antony Lower, founder of the Sussex Archaeological Society, called it a "modern brick structure, which we cannot…