Description
Tours run from April to October and take place on most Saturday mornings, plus some bank holidays, and during the Rye Arts Festival in the autumn.
Tours last one and a half hours and cost £12 per person plus a booking fee. Most of the money raised is used to support the upkeep of the town’s ancient monuments, and museum.
To check tour dates and to make a booking click here
The Winchelsea cellars, or undercrofts, are an important part of the town’s medieval history. Visitors can easily identify the tops of cellar entrances at ground level, but the size, scale and beauty of what lies below can only be appreciated by a visit underground.
Thirty-three accessible medieval cellars still exist and the sites of another 17 are known. They lie mostly in the northern quadrant of the town nearest to the river Brede. Very likely there were others, in the Winchelsea that has gone, in the areas to the south and west of the existing town. Cellars in English towns are not unique to Winchelsea, but only Norwich, Southampton and Chester have similar numbers.
The cellars’ locations in Winchelsea are recorded. Their shape and size measured and we know at least some of the goods that were stored there, but we have little idea how they were built or who built them. There is no record of their builders. Relatively few historic references have been left of the builders of England’s medieval churches and castles and few descriptions of the building methods used. The recorders of history were educated men, not artisans or builders. The records left usually indicate only the patrons of the buildings, the materials used, their source and costs; sometimes the numbers of different artisans employed and their wages. The name of the architect or master mason may have been recorded.
