Horror walks

If you see Lewes as being pretty and quaint, you might be interested to hear about the darker side. The Brighton Fringe Festival is putting on two spooky evening walks, both led by Malcolm Campbell. I tried to talk to him about them, but he was keen to keep the contents a deep, dark secret and would tell me nothing. What can he be hiding? On Saturday he is leading a Horror Walk. The festival blurb tells me there will be gruesome accounts of public executions (the town gallows used to be near where the Elephant and Castle pub is now), and Lewes’s history of plagues and disasters. Local connections with Thomas Becket’s martyrdom and the ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders will be discussed. Some background reading informed me that Wynne Edwin Baxter, founding partner of Lewes law firm Mayo Wynne Baxter, presided over some of the inquests related to the Ripper case after becoming coroner for East London. The second walk takes place next Wednesday, and is a tour of Lewes Ghosts and Graveyards: ‘As sunset cloaks our historic county town only the intrepid will want to be close to the haunts of the dead and their ivy-covered tombstones!’ says the festival guide. You might come across ghostly King's men, fleeing the 1264 Battle of Lewes, or the Victorian woman still haunting the corridors of the Lewes prison. If you hear howling, look out for the ghostly black Devil dog with evil red-eyes that supposedly haunts the Downs. EC