Church of St John sub Castro, Lewes

The Church of St John sub Castro is an Anglican parish church in Lewes, the county town of East Sussex. Its curious Latin name means "St John under the castle", distinguishing it from another church of St John in the town, and it stands on a dramatic site in the north-west corner of the old walled town, on the brink of a chalk cliff. Although the present church was built in 1839, it occupies a site of great antiquity, where a Saxon church stood in the eleventh century, and it preserves a remarkable relic of that earlier church — together with a moving memorial to Finnish prisoners of the Crimean War. A Grade II listed building, it is one of the most historically interesting churches in Lewes.

The story of the site reaches back to Roman and Saxon times. In the early eleventh century a church was built here on the site of a Roman fort that had guarded a crossing of the River Ouse, on a commanding position above an abrupt cliff of chalk; the site contained two conical mounds, one of which was later found to hold human burials. In 1121 the church came into the possession of the great Cluniac Priory of St Pancras at Lewes, and the earliest reference to it being "sub castro" — under the castle — dates from 1190. By the time of the antiquary William Camden, who wrote in 1586, the church was "all desolate and beset with briers and brambles"; the chancel was demolished around that time, and a restoration in 1635 left only the nave and tower standing.

The Saxon church preserved a famous treasure: a doorway and a stone bearing a Latin inscription commemorating Magnus, a member of the Danish royal house who, according to tradition, gave up his princely rank to live as an anchorite — a walled-up religious recluse — at Lewes. When the old church was replaced, this precious relic was carefully preserved: the "Magnus inscription", set within a Saxon arch, was re-erected in the churchyard wall of the new church, where it survives to this day, a rare and evocative link to the Anglo-Saxon past.

By the early nineteenth century the old church had become far too small. The St John's area of Lewes was developing rapidly, and the church's mere 260 seats were quite inadequate for a parish whose population had trebled in thirty years to more than 2,300. Concluding that it was impractical to extend the ancient building, the parish decided to replace it, and the present Church of St John sub Castro was built in 1839, a substantial church in a Romanesque, or Norman, revival style, to serve the growing community.

In the churchyard stands one of the church's most unusual features: a memorial to Finnish prisoners from the Crimean War, who died while confined in the Lewes Naval Prison in the 1850s. These men, taken prisoner during the war against Russia, far from their northern homeland, were buried at Lewes, and the memorial — itself a listed structure — records their fate, a poignant reminder of a little-known episode of the war.

Today St John sub Castro continues as an active Anglican parish church in the Diocese of Chichester, serving its parish in Lewes. Its ancient site, its preserved Saxon relic of the hermit-prince Magnus, and its Crimean War memorial make it a church of unusual historical interest, a building that gathers up many strands of the long history of Lewes.

The church stands in the north-west corner of the historic town of Lewes, on its chalk cliff above the River Ouse, in East Sussex. The old county town, with its Norman castle, its steep streets, its priory ruins and its famous Bonfire Night celebrations, lies all around, with the South Downs National Park rising on every side, the resort of Brighton a short distance to the west, and the wider Sussex Downs and coast within easy reach.

From the Saxon church and the hermit-prince Magnus, through its possession by Lewes Priory and its medieval decay, to the building of the present church in 1839 and the memorial to the Finnish prisoners of the Crimean War, the Church of St John sub Castro gathers a thousand years of the history of Lewes into one building. A Grade II listed church preserving a precious Saxon relic, it remains the living parish church of its corner of Lewes — a place where the deep history of the town is still visible.