Lewes and the Seven Sisters

Welcome to the area

Lewes Castle and Anne of Cleves House, the Bloomsbury houses, Alfriston and the white cliffs from Cuckmere Haven to Beachy Head

Lewes, the county town of East Sussex, climbs from the River Ouse to a Norman castle built after the Battle of Hastings; below it are Anne of Cleves House, the ruins of St Pancras Priory and Southover Grange Gardens. Harvey's brewery is by the river. South of the town, Monk's House at Rodmell was Virginia Woolf's home, and Charleston, near Firle, was the country home of her sister Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

Further east, the Cuckmere valley runs past Alfriston, with the National Trust's first building, and the Long Man of Wilmington on the hill above. At the river mouth, Cuckmere Haven and Seven Sisters Country Park open onto the chalk cliffs, which run past Birling Gap to Beachy Head, Britain's highest chalk sea cliff at 162 metres.