Viva Lewes April 2015 Issue #103

its and bobs
town plaques #1
Located on the southern side of School Hill, the Cinema de
Luxe had 490 seats, all on a single level when it opened. In
the early 1930s the rear of the roof was raised and a balcony
was fitted, which increased the seating capacity to 620 when it
reopened in 1934. The cinema closed on 11 May 1963. The
building lay derelict for several years before it was demolished.
It was manager Reg ‘Fatty’ Briggs’ habit to give private showings
of Pathé News newsreel of the Grand National to members
of the Lewes racing fraternity in the pre-television days
of the 1940s. It was also claimed that he made his own local newsreels rather than subscribe to the ones
bringing national news. New series by Marcus Taylor of Friends of Lewes
lewes in numbers:
accommodating wartime troops
Wartime in the 20th century put severe pressure on Lewes, with a resident population of around
12,000. Exactly 100 years ago in spring 1915 over 12,000 artillerymen of the 22nd Division were
billeted in the town, before embarking for France in September 1915. During WW2, troop numbers
are hard to establish, but the YMCA hostel, with about 20 beds, provided 6,907 nights’ accommodation
to servicemen in the year 1943-44. And a volunteer canteen served 3,598 breakfasts, 20,004 hot
drinks, 30,450 main meals and 131,977 snacks that year. Sarah Boughton
lewes worthy - john delap
Rev. Dr. John Delap was vicar of Iford and Kingston for 47 years, though ‘his interests in pastoral
work were not extensive,’ local historian Charles Cooper notes. He spent those 47 years living in
Lewes, writing ‘poor poetry’ and plays which, when staged, only ran for a few nights. Hecuba, from
1761, was described as ‘not void of merit, but it cannot by any means be called a good play’. One witness
noted that his drama The Captives (1786) was met with ‘roars of laughter’. He’s notable for having
written an early anti-slavery play, Abdalla (performed in Lewes in 1803); though, less nobly, in 1792 he
wrote a long anti-revolutionary poem - Sedition, An Ode - which called Paine ‘Anarchy’s black agent’.
Born in Lincolnshire in 1725, Delap studied at Cambridge, becoming a Doctor of Divinity. He seems
to have been smart and knowledgeable, but also a self-promoting obsessive who was preoccupied
with the opinions of others. After one encounter with him, Fanny Burney wrote ‘he would not let me
rest without either praising what I did not like, or giving explicit reasons why I did not praise.’ He
never married, and died in 1812, having suffered from ill health for most of his life. He knew Samuel
Johnson, Hester Thrale, Burney and David Garrick, though, in the Dictionary of National Biography’s
words, ‘his acquaintance with important literary figures of the day does not seem greatly to have
enhanced his own dramatic abilities.’ Steve Ramsey
With thanks to Timothy Ambrose, who’s working on a biography of Delap
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