History - The Village of Alfriston

Alfriston was originally the property of Aelfric, a Saxon of some importance. His property was a farmstead, or tun as was recorded in the Domesday Book as Alvricestone. Aelfric was awarded the land as a fief, which was land given in return for military service, by King Alfred the Great who also visited the area, as the English fleet was harboured at Westdean.

In 1405, Henry IV granted the town the right to a marker, hence the old market square cross (though now without its crosspiece) which was supposed to help ensure honest and fair trading. Our narrow streets are lined with fourteenth and fifteenth-century houses. In the early 1800s smugglers would run contraband via Alfriston and Cuckmere Haven, with farmers driving their sheep to help cover the smugglers' tracks.

Alfriston was a centre of pilgrimage due to a Sussex girl martyred at the end of the 7th century. St Lewinna was killed about 680 AD by a heathen Saxon. Her body was interred in an early monastic church until her remains were stolen and taken to Flanders in 1058 by a monk called Balger from the Priory of Bergue St Winox. (The present church of St Andrews now stands on the same site.)

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