The apartment suits two families: three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a big living room with games and books, a kitchen that feeds eight, and a travel cot and high chair if you tell us you need them. It is a top-floor flat in a listed building with steep stairs and sash windows, so it is not for crawlers left unattended, but from about school age it works very well. Everything below is within half an hour.
In town, on foot
Lewes Castle is four minutes up the road. Children like it for the obvious reasons: a keep to climb, arrow slits, the whole town laid out below, and a museum next door with a model of Victorian Lewes and things to press. The stairs in the keep are steep and the top is high; hold hands.
The Railway Land is a flat nature reserve at the bottom of the town with a river, reeds, herons and a wooden bridge to stand on. Forty-five minutes round, pushchair-friendly.
Southover Grange Gardens are the town’s picnic lawns, with the Winterbourne stream running through them. Anne of Cleves House, a few minutes further, has a Tudor kitchen and is a quick visit.
The Depot is the town’s cinema, three screens and a café. Save it for rain. The swimming pool is at Lewes Leisure Centre on Mountfield Road, fifteen minutes’ walk.
A short drive
Drusillas Park at Alfriston, about twenty minutes east, is the small zoo that every Sussex child has been to: meerkats, penguins, lemurs, a good adventure playground and rides. It is best for under-tens, and a whole day. Book online at drusillas.co.uk.
Middle Farm at Firle, twelve minutes east on the A27, is a farm shop with an open farm attached: animals to see and a cider shop for the adults. Cheap, unfussy and good for an afternoon.
The beach. Seaford, twenty minutes by car or eighteen by train, has a long shingle beach with the white cliffs of Seaford Head at the end and rock pools at low tide beneath them. Cuckmere Haven and the Seven Sisters are ten minutes further: the walk from the Exceat car park along the river to the beach is flat and two miles each way. Brighton beach and the pier are fifteen minutes by train if you want candyfloss and arcades.
Rainy days
Brighton is the answer to a wet day: the Royal Pavilion, the Sea Life Centre under the pier, the Lanes, and the train back is fifteen minutes. In Lewes itself, the Depot, the castle museum and the bookshops (the Fifteenth Century Bookshop specialises in children’s books) fill an afternoon, and the flat has board games, jigsaws and a Roku TV for the evening.
Eating out with children
Fuego Lounge on the High Street has a children’s menu and does not mind noise. The Pelham Arms opposite the apartment is fine with families early in the evening. ASK Italian near the castle is the reliable pizza option. Most Lewes kitchens stop at nine, so eat early or cook: Waitrose is five minutes’ walk. More in where to eat.
Bonfire Night
Not for small children. The crowds are dense, the bangers go off underfoot for hours, and the town asks families with pushchairs to stay away. Older children who can cope with noise will remember it for the rest of their lives; the Bonfire page explains how to do it from the apartment.
Last checked September 2026. Opening times and prices change; the links go to the official sources.
Header photo: Paul Farmer, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.