Christ Church, Lewes United Reformed and Methodist The Tabernacle 1816-1829 Cliff Geering 200th Anniversary of the Tabernacle congregation 6 November 2016 Transcribed, edited and up-dated by Nick Armstrong, Alan Pett and David Smith Additional research and bibliography by Norman Vance November 2016 ©Christ Church Lewes This booklet has been derived from the notes and research papers left by Cliff Geering, who died in 1993 and was Church secretary from 1972 to 1977. They were given to the Church by his daughter Dorothy. This booklet is one of a series describing the Tabernacle, another gives an account of the Cliffe Chapel, the first Congregational Church in Lewes. They are published as part of the celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the founding of the Tabernacle congregation in 1816. The original sources used in the booklets are the minute and vestry books of the church, surviving letters and legal documents, and pieces published in the local press. These form part of the East Sussex Record Office collection deposited in The Keep, Woollards Way, Brighton, BN1 9BP. [
[email protected]] Lewes at the beginning of the nineteenth century In the years after the Battle of Waterloo Lewes was even more of a county town than it is today. Most of it lay within the bounds of its ancient walls and much of that area was garden, orchard or paddock. Some houses followed the cobbled High Street beyond Westgate into St Anne’s; others reached past Eastgate and the Friars to the river. Over the bridge, the picturesque but not too healthy Cliffe High Street (or West Street) where the buildings almost touched across the narrow roadway, provided the only approach to the town from the East.