Safe as houses

One of the banks in Lewes at the bottom of the School Hill occupies a building which was formerly the home of the long gone Lewes Building Society.

Still carved in the stonework on the outside is what I take to be the emblem of the Society from 1870.

There's an echo of naïve folk art in the simplicity of the house, with its picket fence and garden.

I like the evocative idea of the home secured and surrounded by the belt - representing the support provided by the LBS.

And now the Society is gone, but doubtless many of the houses bought with its collective mutual support still stand.

Its Lewes' own Bailey's Savings & Loan.