Victorian railway line discovered by workmen

The team from Jeary Developments were working on the groundwork for a housing development when they uncovered the stretch of track near Railway Lane in Lewes on Monday.

Archaeologists have said the track appears on the first ordinance survey maps produced in the early 1870s and would have once been populated with steam powered goods trains.

It is believed to be a service line running to and from the town’s once bustling port and busy warehouses.

On the Victorian ordinance survey maps the track is shown to be a branch from Lewes Station.

The track then leads to a turntable before splitting into four separate lines which run towards the town’s warehouses where the trains would have likely filled their wagons with goods.

The line is believed to have been closed as part of the notorious Beeching cuts, named after Dr Richard Beeching when his report in the 1960s led to thousands of miles of train track being axed.

Expert Jim Webster from Chris Butler Archaeological Services (CBAS), based in Polegate, was on site to help analyse the unearthed piece of history.

And Chris Butler, who runs CBAS, said: “I would have thought they would have been coming to pick up whatever had been dropped off by boats coming up the river.

“Lewes was always a major trading port going back hundreds of years with boats coming up from Newhaven unloading supplies.”

He added: “I am quite surprised the actual rails are still there.

“In places where we have done similar surveys you sometimes get the wooden sleepers but the metalwork tends to have been lifted.

"I suspect it might have been left here because the line was in private ownership.”

The track will be removed from the site and recycled to make way for the ongoing Falcon Wharf development.

Nick Pitcher, project manager, from Chailey, said: “We knew it was there because you do initial surveys and we thought there was going to be bits and bobs but we did not expect so much."