Viva Lewes Issue #126 March 2017

INSIDE LEFT
WINDOW SHOPPING
Look closely at the big window in this picture and you’ll see the proud boast of the company Clark,
Hunt & Co. Ltd: ‘Established in the reign of George IV’. The company was founded in 1828 in
Shoreditch, but didn’t set up this shop in Lewes until this picture was taken, in 1946. They also used
the Old Needlemakers/Candle Factory for storage. Clark Hunt (don’t say it too quickly) was where local
builders used to go, long before the days of Homebase and Screwfix, if they needed any bits.
So why such big windows? The building was originally constructed, back in 1929, as Westgate Garage
(later Venus Motor Showroom) a car showroom and mechanics. This single-storey unit was built along
with the much higher structure to its left, after the demolition of buildings which projected much
further into the road, in order to shorten the ‘bottleneck’.
White Lion Street (now Westgate Street) was much narrower, too. Until its demolition in 1939,
the White Lion pub was directly opposite the garage section of the showroom (on the right of this
picture). White Lion Street was used as a short cut by savvy Lewesian drivers in the days before the
by-pass: New Road was a two-way thoroughfare until it was sealed off in the early 70s.
I asked on the Lewes Past Facebook forum if anyone remembered Clark, Hunt & Co and there was a
flurry of replies, particularly from people who had worked in the shop. Paul Mockford was employed
there for five years in the 70s (in which time the operation was taken over by Cakebread Robey plumbers’
merchant), and remembers the discovery of an underground tank in the basement (originally for
petrol, presumably) which got filled up with cement. He also recalled his regulars laughing at the fewand-far-between
DIY practitioners who used to come in.
Before becoming Baltica, selling Polish pottery, in 2010, the site had a number of uses. Cade Craft sold
sewing machines and haberdashery items; Circa turned it into an upmarket restaurant, and Guido’s
was a short-lived Tex-Mex tapas bar. Baltica, of course, ran a busy café on the site alongside their pottery,
before closing that side of the business in 2015.
Thanks, as ever, to Edward Reeves (01272 473274) for the use of this picture. Also to Paul Mockford,
Mike Ward-Sale and Mick Symes from the Lewes Past Facebook group.
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