[2] Ten Protestant martyrs who were faithful to their cause during the reign of the Catholic monarch, Queen Mary, were held in the undercroft and then burnt at the stake in front of the Star Inn during the Marian Persecutions of 1555–1557.

[4] In 1732 the local MP, Thomas Sergison, acquired the Star Inn and converted it into his campaign headquarters; the modifications including the construction of a new façade in the Georgian style, the installation of a grand staircase, which had been recovered from his former mansion at Slaugham, and the creation of a large assembly room.

In the 1880s the narrow wings either side of the tower were rebuilt as offices for Borough officials; but larger premises were needed and by 1883 the feasibility began to be explored of purchasing the Star Inn.

[2] An extensive programme of works, which involved the erection of a new façade constructed in red brick with terracotta dressings and the preservation of the undercroft and the grand staircase, was undertaken to a design by Samuel Denman in the Baroque style and completed in 1893.

[2] The complex was expanded when council offices, designed in the arts and crafts style by Rowland Hawke Halls, were erected to the north of the assembly hall in 1913, facing Fisher Street;[2] it incorporated plaster relief panels sculpted by local artist George Banksart with scenes of rural life.

[9] The sculpture, The Kiss, by Auguste Rodin, was placed on display in the assembly room of the town hall during much of the First World War but was removed in 1917, supposedly after a local headmistress, Kate Fowler Tutt, objected to its erotic nature.

[21] There is also a portrait by Cave Thomas of the first mayor of Lewes, Wynne Edwin Baxter,[22] and a bust by Humphrey Hopper depicting Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.