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Barbican House Museum

Museum

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What is recorded here

Barbican House is a late-sixteenth-century Lewes town house, enlarged in the seventeenth century and given its regular brick front in the eighteenth. The Sussex Archaeological Society bought it for £2,300 in 1907 after losing its rented home. Opened in June 1908, it became the society's first owned museum, library and headquarters beside Lewes Castle.

Why it was built

The house began as a substantial timber-framed home near the castle entrance, with a dated 1579 fireplace marking its early fabric.

People and work

Successive households altered it before society curators, librarians and researchers filled the rooms with Sussex finds, records and study collections.

How it changed

Seventeenth-century enlargement and an eighteenth-century brick front reshaped the house; purchase in 1907 led to its museum opening in 1908.

What survives

The medieval cellar, old timber work, three-storey brick front, hipped roof and domestic rooms survive in museum and library use.

Why it mattered

Ownership gave one of Britain's oldest county archaeological societies a lasting base from which to preserve, publish and display evidence across Sussex.

Sources for this account

Sources checked 16 August 2026.

From OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors) w445500399

Places near here

Photo credits
  • C Woodward, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • N Chadwick, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Oast House Archive, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Stephen McKay, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Arild Vågen, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Dylan Moore, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Basher Eyre, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Simon Carey, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Kevin Gordon, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Marathon, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
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