There was no royal charter for the Lewes town market, which originally stretched from Westgate to St Nicholas’s Church on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The congestion, noise and smell of market activity caused considerable nuisance to the local residents.
In 1791, The Market Commissioners met for the first time and decided to exercise new powers granted by a Private Act of Parliament to remove the provisions market from Castlegate Comer to a more convenient site.
The idea for the Tower was first conceived in 1786, when a Town Meeting resolved that a public subscription be opened to build a tower to house the Town Bell ‘Old Gabriel' and the Town Clock. They agreed with Lord Hampden of Glynde to lay out the market on land he owned to the East of the Crown Inn.
The Town Tower, now known as the Market Tower, was built in 1792; the same year in which Tom Paine published his seminal work: The Rights of Man’. Local masons were paid £353 to build the tower which was the town’s first secular building and made a strong civic declaration of the emerging importance of the town. It housed the town bell, the town clock and the town jail. A vaulted area at street level provided a market place.
The provisions market was held every weekday, the start and finish being signalled by the tolling of Old Gabriel’. The Market Commissioners fixed the tolls to be levied on sales of meat, fish, butter, herbs, vegetables and fruit. The markets for corn, wool, cattle and horses were held elsewhere.
The structure was of red brick in the style of historicism. On its east wall, which is the main facade, a handsome painted terracotta cartouche was installed with the town arms in the centre and with floral swags on either side, all in relief.
The Town Clock also came from St Nicholas Church Tower. It must be distinguished from the old Market Clock which now hangs adjacent to St Michael's Church in the High Street The old Market Clock was originally housed above the old market house which stood at the North side of Castlegate at the top of the High Street Thus, in the nature of the many idiosyncrasies of Lewes, the Town Clock is now in the Market Tower and the old Market Clock that now hangs in the High Street has become commonly referred to as the Town Clock.
In 1800 the east wing was converted into a lock-up - a room to house persons, including ‘Trampers’ (beggars), arrested to appear before local magistrates, and to shelter 'poor travellers'. Previously the Borough's 'Black Hole’ for miscreants was in a bastion of the medieval West Gate, which was pulled down about 1790.
In 1880 the west wing, formerly an open niche allowing access to the market and to the stair up to the bell, was deemed a 'great nuisance’ and was walled up and fitted out as a shop. The photograph on the right, taken before 1880, shows the shop in the west wing used as an order office for wine and brandy sold by Henry Wingham, inn keeper of the Crown. In 1808 The High Constables also raised Gabriel (its gudgeons being tightened) so that it could be better heard.
The last meeting of the Market Commissioners was recorded in the Market Minute Book in 1840.
By 1872, the market had been disused for some years and the site had become a disgrace and nuisance. The Market Commissioners handed the site over to the High Constables for the benefit of the Borough. The sum of £450 was raised by public subscription to build a room, 30 feet by 20 feet, to house public meetings. By 1887, the wings had been converted into offices for Borough officials, probably for the Borough Surveyor and the inspector of nuisances. Possibly by this time, the wings had been given their distinctive Gothic windows, plaques and a castellated roof line.
The fire officers and the fire fighting engine and equipment were moved into the market yard in 1892, until a purpose built fire station was constructed at the bottom of North Street.
In modem times the Market Tower has been in use as the headquarters of the Lewes Operatic Society. In 2009, the Society kindly agreed to relinquish space on the ground floor to enable greater public access to this historic building.
The Town Bell, 'Old Gabriel' was cast by the Frenchman John Tonne between 1529 and 1536. It has a large shield with the royal arms of Henry VIII, a figure of St. Catherine, a medallion of Henry VIII, a crown, and a Tudor rose. It is inscribed in Latin 'Gabrielis menti dedens habio nomen' (I have the name of Gabriel) and has a later inscription cut upon showing 1792 as the date of its removal to the Market Tower.
'Old Gabriel’ is the largest pre-reformation bell in Sussex; it may have been cast for Lewes Priory, because it seem unlikely that any Lewes Parish Church would have been able to have borne the cost of such a large and costly bell.
‘Old Gabriel’, had hung in the partly ruined church of St Nicholas that stood on the site of the present War Memorial at the top of School Hill until it was demolished in 1761.