What is your favorite place to go in your city?
I’m standing here right now in Southover Grange Gardens. I’m looking at the veteran black mulberry — a tree that has stood here for more than three centuries — and thinking of its long association with John Evelyn, the 17th-century diarist and early silviculturist who grew up only a few steps from here. A robin is calling from one of the great trees behind me: a heavily buttressed mature copper beech whose roots swell like muscles out of the ground.
It was these gardens that made our family fall in love with Lewes back in May 2000. I still have photographs of our children, aged two and four (actually still one and three), clambering over this very tree and along the warm stone walls that enclose the garden. Those images — small hands gripping bark, sun on the stone — are woven into my memory of the place.
For me, this garden is the natural, beating heart of the town. Throughout the year, parents drift in with toddlers as the nearby primary schools spill out. Teenagers sit on the grass in summer, reading or talking quietly. Older residents take slow, familiar circuits along the paths. It is a place that belongs to all stages of life.
I’ve hosted a child’s birthday party here. I’ve watched civil weddings spill out of Southover Grange on bright afternoons, brides and grooms stepping under the trees for their first photographs. From spring to late summer the café opens, and the soft hum of conversation settles among the flowerbeds and yew walks. The Winterbourne stream threads through the garden, adding its own quiet texture of sound. Above the treetops you catch glimpses of Lewes Castle — a reminder that the town’s thousand years of history are always present.
Other rituals attach themselves to the place too. Every autumn I take part in the annual skittles tournament here, rolling wooden balls down a makeshift alley as part of the Town Council team. It’s light-hearted and communal, exactly the sort of small tradition that anchors you to a place.
On “city” versus “town”:
In Britain, Lewes is very much a town — “city” has a specific historic meaning here (a cathedral or royal charter). American English uses “city” far more broadly. So if this prompt expects “favourite place in your city,” I answer in the British sense: my favourite place in my town — and without question, it is Southover Grange Gardens.
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