The Lewes Tube Map Explained, Line by Line
The Lewes tube map is my re-imagining of an East Sussex market town as a transit network, with eight lines, the River Ouse running through it, and the 2030 and 2080 flood risk zones laid straight over the top. It is titled A Useless Lewes Tube Map, and the subtitle is Local Lines For Local People. Neither of those is false advertising.
I drew it during the 2020 lockdown, using the location map and gathering the facts and myths from when I lived here. Some of the stations are real places. Some are things that happen here. A few are arguments I am still prepared to have.
The Lewes Tube Map Art Print is in the Lewes and Uckfield collection.
The Eight Lines
The named routes are Cliffe and South Street, Nevill and Commercial, Southover, and Borough and Waterloo. Those four are roughly the shape of the town as anyone living in it would describe it, which is the only geography a tube map owes you.
Then it stops behaving. There is a Virginia Woolf Branch Line running down to Rodmell, which is where she lived at Monk's House and where the river she walked into still runs past the bottom of the village. There is a Funicular Line up to the golf club, which does not exist and ought to.
And there is the DFL Line. For anyone reading this from outside Sussex, DFL stands for Down From London. If you need that explained, you are probably on it.
The DFL Line Is the Only One With a Timetable
It calls at Old DFL Wharf and Newer DFL Wharf. There is an Upper DFL Wharf marked TBC, and a DFL Extension shown as due in 2025.
A short distance away sits Eton New Town, also marked as established in 2025, which is the same observation approached from a slightly different angle.
That is the whole joke of the print in one line: a town drawing its own gentrification as a planned infrastructure project, complete with phasing.
The Station Names Are Where the Map Does Its Work
A real transit map earns its keep through naming, and this one is no different. These are the invented stops, and each one is something that happens in Lewes.
| Station | What it refers to |
|---|---|
| Rozzer Headquarters, and separately Rozzers (Hiding) | Two entirely different local experiences of the same institution and behaviours |
| Bypass Rumble, then Bypass Rumble Denial | The noise, and the stage of house buying at which it is not mentioned |
| Random Starbucks | Self-explanatory, in a town with this many independent cafes, one on a bypass makes sense |
| Angry Horse Rider | An angry fixture on the lanes above the town |
| Twitchers Loiter | The brooks, and the people standing very still in them, watching equally bored birds |
| I Saw You Coming | A certain kind of shop, and a certain kind of price ticket |
| Slow Coffees | An appalling service level, drawn as a destination |
| Culfail Snail | The tunnel, the 'sculpture', and the speed of getting through that tunnel |
| Abyss, and Smelly Ditch | Both real, both unloved, neither on the tourist trail |
There are three symbol jokes as well, and they are the ones people find last. There is a "No Bus Station" sign, drawn using the standard bus interchange symbol. Swanborough carries an airport symbol. The Rowing Club appears in quotation marks, and I stand by that.
The Real Lewes Is All on There Too
The invented stations only land because the genuine ones hold the map together. Harvey's is on it, as the brewery has been on the Cliffe since long before any of us. So are Lewes Castle, Anne of Cleves, Lewes Priory, Pells Pool, HMP Lewes, the Cliffe Bonfire Site, Lewes FC, the Linklater Pavilion, Keere Street, Rotten Row, and The Depot with a cinema symbol of its own.
Pells Pool is worth its station. It is the oldest freshwater lido in the country, opened in 1860, and it is still run by the community rather than the council.
The Cliffe Bonfire Site earns its place for the obvious reason. Lewes holds the largest 5th November celebrations in the country, run by several separate bonfire societies, and for one night the actual street network stops working entirely, which is a thing a transit map is well placed to comment on.
Why the Flood Zones Are Drawn Over the Top
This is the part that stops the print from being only a joke. The 2030 and 2080 flood risk zones are overlaid on the network, so you can see which lines and stations are affected and when.
Lewes flooded badly in October 2000. The Ouse came up through the Cliffe and into the shops, and people here still date things by it. Drawing the projected zones over a town that already knows what they look like isn't really satire.
So the map is set slightly in the future, after the seas have risen, which is why it is useless in the way the title promises. It is not trying to help you get anywhere. It shows you a town, then the water.
The Two Nobody Finds First Time
There are two stations I put on for locals to spot: Vampire's Wife Lair and McCloud's Rusty Folly. I am not going to explain either of them here. If you live here, you already know, and if you do not, the pleasure of the print is partly in the hunt.
Sizes and Framing
The print is a Giclée on 230gsm premium acid-free matte fine art paper, in A2 (594 x 420mm) and A1 (841 x 594mm), both landscape, plus 24 x 18 inches and 36 x 24 inches for buyers in the United States. Prices start at £42.
It comes unframed or ready to hang in a black wood frame. A2 works in a kitchen or a hallway. A1 is the one for a local business or a pub wall, and it is the size at which people actually stop and start reading the station names out loud, which is the point of it.
The Companion Map
There is an Uckfield version, titled A Not Very Useful Uckfield Tube Map, and the Lewes map points across to it. The Uckfield Tube Map Art Print does the same job for the town up the road.
For Sussex drawn a third way, the Brighton and Hove Albion map covers the club rather than the town, running the managers, the grounds and the owners as separate lines from 1901 onwards.
Questions About the Lewes Map
Is it an accurate map of Lewes?
No, and the title says so. It is a tube map, so it works on connections and sequence rather than distance and direction. You could not navigate with it, and Harry Beck's original could not be used for walking around London either.
What is not on the map?
Plenty. It is one sheet, not a gazetteer, so outlying villages, most residential streets and anything I could not make earn its place are all left off. Rodmell is on it only because of the Virginia Woolf line.
Why 2030 and 2080?
Those are the two horizons used in the published flood risk projections, so those are the two zones I drew. I did not invent the dates.
Do you need to be from Lewes to enjoy it?
Mostly, yes, and I would rather say that than pretend otherwise. Roughly half the stations mean nothing without local knowledge. That is why it works as a present for someone who lives here and rarely for anyone who does not.
Was it drawn by hand?
Every line and station on it was placed by me. No AI was used to research or draw it, on this map or on any of the others in the range.
The Lewes Tube Map Art Print is on its product page. The Lewes and Uckfield collection has both towns, and if you are buying for someone else and cannot decide, there is an art print gift card.
