Going once, going twice...Locals bid to save and celebrate iconic Lewes buildings

Left empty since the last auction sale in December 2016, they are shortly due for demolition to make way for new housing.

Many of us have fond memories of Gorringe’s, regularly rummaging through bric-a-brac boxes on Monday mornings, or eyeing up that perfect painting or antique set of chairs. So it was with sadness that the town saw them close down following the retirement of much-loved local auctioneer Julian Dawson after 50 years in the trade. The site and its distinctive green buildings have been unused ever since.

But now, with the support of Lewes District Council, a group of local residents, historians, students and artists have acted to celebrate the history of the buildings and try to secure their future. One of the huts has been swept, cleaned and dusted, ready to play host to one last display of exhibits, carefully curated by members of the community and by students from East Sussex College, as part of a not-to-be missed opportunity to enjoy these historic buildings and all their many memories for one last time.

The Open Day on July 6 is part of an art project led by local artist Marco Crivello, who specialises in works featuring ‘found,’ or abandoned, objects.

Titled A Place for Everything, Marco has been working with older members of the community, with fellow artists, and with students studying for the Art & Design Extended Diploma at East Sussex College and their tutor James DiBiase, to curate an exhibition of the many intriguing objects found abandoned on the floor and shelves of the huts, still surviving forgotten after all these years and waiting to be rediscovered.

Marco says the project was inspired by fellow artist Mark Dion’s Thames Dig, and is designed to create a “fertile space for conversations” as people consider and reflect on what they have found. “A Place for Everything is a chance to be intrigued by the origins of objects, their influence on our lives, and the significance we attribute to them,” he says.

The objects have been carefully cleaned and will be laid out ready for all to enjoy, and range from beads to family photos, and sparkly shoes to old vinyl records. There will be a chance to ‘bid’ for some items at an ‘auction’ during the day, led by former Gorringe’s staff member and local antiques expert Neil Lewis. Neil will also be on hand to share some of his many memories of the auction house and the people and objects that passed through there.

And that’s not all. The group hopes to raise enough funds to brighten up the plain hoardings outside the building site with an abundant display celebrating the huts and their history, as well as highlights from the Open Day.

Because it turns out the buildings have a further intriguing chapter in their story. They are actually portable, and can be dismantled and put back together again, exactly as happened when they arrived here over 100 years ago, by train, from Seaford.

According to archaeologist Luke Barber, the two buildings were once almost certainly one building, and once formed the church for the WW1 training camps at either North Camp or South Camp, Seaford. “Large portable corrugated steel buildings were extremely popular during this period due to their low cost, durability and ease of putting up and taking down, and could be ordered from catalogues, ready to travel all over the world and be used not just as churches but as schools, railways stations and hospitals.

"The many temporary buildings used during the war in their thousands were sold off afterwards, including this church, which appears from maps to have arrived in Lewes as part of the livestock market shortly afterwards.”

But these buildings are particularly special. “The Lewes Green Huts are unique,” says Edwina Livesey, who is coordinating the project. “Between 1914 and 1918, tens of thousands of volunteer troops from not just this country but all over the world turned up at Seaford to train to fight for Britain, the ‘Mother Country,’ in France on the Western Front, in Egypt and in Africa. They came from as far afield as Canada and the Caribbean, and many of them died here having endured intolerable conditions and are buried in Seaford Cemetery. This was their church.”

“There isn’t another building like these, with such a history, anywhere.”

The group hopes the awareness of their history raised by A Place for Everything and its Open Day, along with the Hoardings, a window display during August’s Artwave, and a further event, Hut Stories, to be held in October during Black History Month, will help these iconic buildings along the next stage of the journey where they will, somewhere, find a new home.

Because thanks to the generosity of the housing developers, You Are Home, they will as far as possible be dismantled with care and then stored, ready for the next chapter in their long story.

The work to celebrate and record the huts is supported by Lewes District Council and Lewes Town Council but receives no external funding. To achieve all they would like to do, the group have established a Crowdfunder, the Lewes Green Huts Project, to pay for costs and materials and establish a website to record the project and the huts’ history.

The group would be enormously grateful for all donations, however small, and they are all being match funded by the East Sussex Community Wellbeing Fund, making every donation go twice as far. As a special thank you, all Crowdfunder supporters will be invited to a special reception at the Open Day, which will be free, and have a guaranteed ticket. It is hoped that the many historians and artists who have contributed to knowledge about the huts, and responded creatively to them, will also attend, making this a Lewes occasion not to be missed.

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/lewes-green-huts-action