Viva Lewes Issue 117 June 2016

BITS AND BOBS
TOWN PLAQUES #15: FORMER BURIAL GROUND, CLIFFE
By the late 1970s, traffic problems in Lewes had improved considerably
with the building of Phoenix Causeway and the by-pass in the previous
decade – no longer was a two-way Cliffe Bridge the only way to cross
the Ouse! However, for those living in South Street (effectively the link
road to the A27) the relentless noisy traffic past their doors was unbearable.
Plans were prepared for what was at that time to be the longest
road tunnel in the UK not passing under water. Several cottages on the
south side of Malling Street were cleared, as was the burial ground belonging to the church of St Thomas a
Becket in Cliffe High Street, to make way for the new roundabout at the tunnel mouth. A stone plaque on
the retaining wall records this loss. The 420-metre tunnel opened in December, 1980 preceded by a “walkthrough
Sunday” when Lewesians could stroll through to admire this feat of engineering. Marcus Taylor
LEWES WORTHY
“I think in the early days it was considered all a bit of a joke. Nobody really expected the Bluebell Railway
to last more than six months,” says Bill Brophy, chairman of the Bluebell Railway Trust. “Nobody’d done
it before, the odds were horrendous, and of course, the small membership didn’t have any money.” But,
luckily, Bernard Holden (1908-2012) was an optimist.
During the Blitz, he’d helped plan train routes around bomb-damaged lines. Later in the war, he’d run
trains in India, having to contend with Japanese troops, wild animals and monsoons. “You’ve got to be a bit
of an optimist to deal with that, haven’t you?” says Brophy. By the late 1950s, when four students knocked
on his door asking for help reopening the Bluebell Line, Holden was already a long-serving railwayman.
Around this time “British Railways had an image problem”, which they partly blamed on steam trains,
Brophy says. “There’d become a time when it was frowned upon if you put up a picture of a steam train
in the office.” So Holden, as a British Rail employee taking a lead role in the Bluebell project, was taking
quite a risk.
‘His support, expertise and connections were vital’, his obituary in Bluebell News noted. He went on ‘to
lead the project for half a century.’ An astute man, an enemy of wastefulness who even reused envelopes,
Holden was also an energetic, good-humoured figure. In 1991, by which time the Bluebell was getting
200,000 visitors a year, he was interviewed by The Times. ‘Friends used to think I was a nutter,’ he said. ‘But
they don’t anymore.’ Steve Ramsey