The Snow Drop Inn - Lewes East Sussex

[Coast]

I pass this establishment almost every day and knew some of the story behind its name, but have only discovered the full extent of it recently:

Many inn names hide a secret or a forgotten meaning. A case in point is the inordinate number of Marquis of Granby pubs, their name deriving from that military marquess’s habit of setting up in business as publicans former NCOs. Behind the romantic-sounding Snowdrop Inn in Lewes lies a more tragic tale.

The pub on South Street does not get its name from the spring flower but from an extraordinary event that took place on 27 December 1836. That winter was particularly cold, the weather taking a turn for the worse on Christmas Day, when the pioneering dinosaur collector and Lewes local, Gideon Mantell, wrote in his diary: ‘A snowstorm, begun last night, has continued through the day, and everything is most dreary and wretched.’

In fact this was something of an understatement. Snow had actually started to fall on 21 December and by Christmas Day most roads in the South of England were impassable. Snowdrifts tens of feet thick were reported on the South Downs and the mail service had ground to a halt.

At that time, on the place now occupied by the Snowdrop Inn, stood a row of workmen’s cottages, known as Boulder Row, no doubt from their position at the base of a large chalk cliff. On this clifftop the snow had been piling up for nearly a week, until, at 10.15 on the morning of the 27th, it suddenly gave way, releasing the largest avalanche in British history straight on to the cottages of Boulder Row.

The snow and rubble that crashed down on to the street trapped numerous families in their cottages and the townsfolk spent a frantic day trying to dig out the engulfed and injured. By the evening it was known that eight people had died in the avalanche.

Despite being described by every newspaper of the day as the worst disaster in a catastrophic winter, the story melted away almost as quickly as the snow. Avalanches simply don’t happen in Britain and little more was said about the event. Today, over 170 years later, the only clues to this almost unique episode are a white dress in the local museum worn by two-year-old Fanny Boakes, who happily was dug out alive from the snow; a small plaque to the dead in South Malling Church; and the name of the pub that now stands on the site of the calamity – the Snowdrop Inn.

http://www.secretbri...owdrop_Inn.html

http://maps.google.c...F-8&sa=N&tab=il

http://en.wikipedia....Lewes_avalanche

http://www.information-britain.co.uk/famdates.php?id=832

[chionomaniac]

What a coincidence Coast!! I have come to Lewes for supper with the family and had always wanted to come here. So presently I am drinking a pint of local sle in the beer garden of the Snowdrop Inn under the chalk cliff that the fateful snow fell from!

[Coast]

What a coincidence Coast!! I have come to Lewes for supper with the family and had always wanted to come here. So presently I am drinking a pint of local sle in the beer garden of the Snowdrop Inn under the chalk cliff that the fateful snow fell from!

Result, I hope it's from the brewery around the corner!?