Editing Lewes (section)

==Etymology==
The place-name "Lewes" is first attested in an [[Anglo-Saxon charter]] circa 961 AD, where it appears as ''Læwe''. It appears as ''Lewes'' in the [[Domesday Book]] of 1086.<ref>[[Eilert Ekwall]], ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names'', p.297.</ref> The addition of the <-s> suffix seems to have been part of a broader trend of [[Anglo-Normans|Anglo-Norman]] scribes pluralising Anglo-Saxon place-names (a famous example being their rendering of ''Lunden'' as ''Londres'', hence the modern [[French language|French]] name for [[London]]).<ref>{{cite book |last=Brent |first=Colin |date=2004 |title=Pre-Georgian Lewes: The Emergence of a County Town |page=10}}</ref>

The traditional derivation of ''Læwe'', first posited by the Tudor antiquarian [[Laurence Nowell]], derives it from the [[Old English]] word ''hlæw'', meaning "hill" or "[[Tumulus|barrow]]", presumably referring to School Hill (on which the historic centre of Lewes stands) or to one of the five ancient burial mounds, all now levelled, in the vicinity of [[Church of St John sub Castro, Lewes|St John sub Castro]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Brent |first=Colin |date=2004 |title=Pre-Georgian Lewes: The Emergence of a County Town |pages=8–10}}</ref><ref name=Whynne>{{cite book |last=Whynne-Hammond |first=Charles |year=2007 |title=English Place-names Explained |isbn=978-1-85306-911-6 |publisher=Countryside Books |page=229}}</ref>

However, this etymology has been challenged by the Swedish philologist Rune Forsberg on the grounds that the loss of the initial {{angbr|h}} in ''hlæw'' would be unlikely [[phonology|phonologically]] in this context. He suggested that the name ''Læwe'' instead derives from the rare Old English word ''lǣw'' ("wound, incision"), and reflects the fact that from the top of School Hill Lewes overlooks the narrow, steep-sided "gash" where the River Ouse cuts through the line of the South Downs.<ref>{{cite book |last=Forsberg |first=Rune |date=1997 |title=The Place-Name Lewes |publisher=Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia 100}}</ref> This theory was endorsed in 2011 by ''A Dictionary of British Place Names''.<ref>A. D. Mills (2011), ''A Dictionary of British Place Names'', Oxford University Press.</ref>

A third possibility has been advanced by [[Richard Coates]], who has argued that ''Læwe'' derives from ''lexowia'', an Old English word meaning "hillside, slope" (of which there is no shortage in the Lewes area). This unusual word was borrowed into Old English from [[Old Welsh]], the [[Welsh language|Modern Welsh]] spelling being ''llechwedd''.
<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Coates |first1=Richard |date=1990 |title='The name of Lewes: some problems and possibilities' |journal=The English Place-Name Society Journal |volume=23 |pages=5–15}}
{{cite journal |last1=Coates |first1=Richard |date=1997 |title='The name of Lewes' |journal=Sussex Archaeological Collections |volume=135 |pages=141–2}} in {{cite journal |last=Bleach |first=John |title=A Romano-British (?) Barrow cemetery and the origins of Lewes |journal=Sussex Archaeological Collections |volume=135 |year=1997 |pages=131-142 |doi=10.5284/1085055 |doi-access=free}}
{{cite journal |last1=Coates |first1=Richard |date=1998 |title='Review of Forsberg (1997)' |journal=Locus Focus |volume=2 |pages=18–20}}
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