The county town of East Sussex can look back on more than a thousand years of well-recorded history, and this perceptive book examines its life over that span of time through the events and the individuals that have given Lewes its character. The author examines the influence of the River Ouse on commerce; the roads, once so bad that oxen took people to church; religion, dominated for 450 years by the Cluniac Priory of St Pancras at Southover; markets and fairs, agriculture, law and order, and much more. This book has much to say and it does very powerfully.