Kingston near Lewes

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Kingston near Lewes is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. The village is mentioned in the Domesday Book and is located two miles (3.2km) south of Lewes on the slopes of the South Downs.

The Norman parish church is dedicated to St Pancras and has a distinctive Tapsell gate, with a central pivot which locals believe was designed to make it easy for funeral bearers to pass either side.

The village is small and pleasantly situated. Buildings include: the village school; Village Hall; Kingston Riding Stables; and local pub The Juggs, based in two 14th Century cottages and now owned by Kentish brewer Shepherd Neame. The pub and Juggs Lane (a road used as a public path which runs by it) are named after the fish carriers used by "fishwives" on their way through Kingston to Lewes market. Many of the older houses are in the original village centre, The Street, a picturesque mixture of cottages and larger farmhouses that leads past St Pancras Church and the Village Pound, where stray sheep were once kept, to the South Downs Way.

During the 1930s to 1950s, a number of substantial houses were built on Kingston Ridge and in the early 1960s orchard land was developed to form what is known locally as "the estate", family houses that helped serve the expansion of the University of Sussex at that time. During the construction of the estate, a new village green, St. Pancras Green, was built, with tennis courts, cricket and occasional rounds of the traditional Sussex summer game of Stoolball. The radical reputation of the university influx earned this new green the nickname "Red Square" from some of the more traditional locals.

[edit] External links

• Kingston parish council website
• Photos of Kingston church
• Four Seasons in Kingston Village, on Webshots