New tour on Lewes' hidden gay history

Dom Ramos, a history guide brought up in Lewes, offers a new 2025 one or two-hour tour to highlight Lewes’ hidden gay history in a walking tour around the town.

The tours, occurring twice weekly, take you through intriguing stories of subterfuge, and both oases of freedom and places of oppression seen in houses, parks, and buildings with a story. The tales involve Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, Violet Gordon-Woodhouse, Radclyffe Hall, John Maynard Keynes and the Uranians: a group of aesthetes whose love was not as platonic as claimed, set against a background of oppression, class and tradition in the heart of Sussex.

Dom Ramos, now working on a book on famous figures of Lewes, has researched many key figures in the town and England’s history, eking out a buried history patched over in standard accounts. Winner of a Civic Award for his now well-known mural of a friar’s garden in Lewes, he both writes, and paints as a mural painter locally and internationally.

“Whilst remaining entertaining,” he feels “history doesn’t have to be dry even if it is accurate. History has tragic pathos, but it can be shockingly funny too.”

Cost: £20/2 hour or £15/1 hour. Discounts for 6+ group. Dom hopes that the deeper gay cultural scene can be given this entertaining glimpse into the past in what remains a beautiful town worthy of what is really a good gay day out.

Contact Lively Lewes History Tours by email - muralista@icloud.com - and quote ‘Tour’ in subject line or phone 07736 254 175.