£400,000 facelift

The money for the Malling Street building, currently occupied by Pastorale Antiques, is coming from a consortium and the owner himself.

The English Heritage Lottery Fund is supplying 50,000 and local authorities and the Friends of Lewes a further 50,000 between them.

Some 300,000 is being supplied by the owner.

Work on the grade two listed building started at the beginning of September and is expected to end towards the end of May next year.

Lewes District Council design and conservation officer Mike Lea first spotted the building's delapidation and potential more than a decade ago.

The project, carried out under the Conservation Area Partnership, has involved removing the external render and rotted roof, erecting scaffolding, repairing the timber frame, returning the render, re-roofing in tiles, re-building the back wall and putting in services.

'We are very pleased that the work is finally being done,' said Mr Lea. 'Looking at the priorities, it was decided very early on that Pastorale needed the work first and fastest, but there were difficulties in making the sums add up.'

The building started life as The King and Queen. There is a lease held by Cliffe Church dated 1694 which describes the property as at that date bearing the sign of The Swan.

By 1755 it had become The White Swan and the building as it stands today probably dates from that period.

It closed in the early years of the 20th Century. For a while it was a laundry, then a depot of the electricity board and then a warehouse.