Which English county contains Lewes, a town famous for Bonfire Night?

Lewes is in the English county of East Sussex.

Lewes is the county town of East Sussex and hosts one of Britain’s largest and most distinctive Bonfire Night celebrations. The event takes place around 5 November and commemorates the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, when Guy Fawkes was arrested in 1605 while guarding explosives intended for the House of Lords.

Lewes’s festivities also remember 17 Protestant martyrs from the town who were burned during the Marian Persecutions under Mary I. That additional local history helps explain why the celebration has a particularly elaborate and sometimes controversial character. Processions, bonfires, fireworks, burning crosses, and large effigies all feature in the tradition.

The county can be confused with Kent because both are in southeast England and lie near the English Channel. Lewes, however, is in East Sussex, inland from the Sussex coast and close to Brighton. Sussex was historically one county; it was divided administratively into East Sussex and West Sussex in the modern period.