and consequently the present ruins are very scanty. Though the
foundations laid bare at the cutting of the railway in 1845 show the
great extent of the buildings, the battered walls which now remain give
but little indication of the imposing dimensions quoted above, and the
visitor will have to depend on sentiment and the imagination rather
than on actual sightseeing. The excavators in 1845 had a gruesome
experience, for they discovered a charnel pit containing thirteen cart
loads of bones of the fallen warriors at the battle of Lewes. Although
nearly six centuries had elapsed the stench was dreadful.

That the archaeological interest of Lewes owes much to the making of
the railway will now be seen.

[Illustration: THE PRIORY RUINS, LEWES.]

The following account appeared in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1845:--

"On the morning of Tuesday, October 28, a most interesting discovery
was made by the workmen employed in forming a cutting for the Lewes and
Brighton Railway, through the ground formerly occupied by the great
Cluniac Priory of St. Pancras, at Lewes. It is well-known that the
original founders, in 1078, were William de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, of
a great Norman family, and his wife Gundred, the daughter of William
the Conqueror and his Queen Matilda; that they pulled down an old
wooden church to replace it by a stone one, and that after their deaths
in 1085 and 1088, they were buried in the chapter-house of their
Priory. So effectual, however, was the destruction of the buildings in
1537 by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners of Henry VIII that the very
site of the church has been uncertain, and there has long been nothing
visible of the ruins but a confused mass of broken walls and arches