County in England
East Sussex
Britain's tallest chalk sea cliff, a town that burns effigies of popes every November, and the real home of Winnie-the-Pooh: East Sussex packs in a lot.
Key information
- County
- East Sussex
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- The Battle of Hastings, Brighton, Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters, Lewes Bonfire, Winnie-the-Pooh
- What locals are called
- Sussex folk, with Brightonians in Brighton; the county motto is 'We wunt be druv'
- Famous people
- Thomas Paine, Virginia Woolf, A. A. Milne, Rudyard Kipling
- Football clubs
- Brighton & Hove Albion, Hastings United, Eastbourne Borough, Lewes
About East Sussex
The cliff that moved house
Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, at 162 metres. It is the dramatic end of a line of white cliffs that includes the Seven Sisters, a run of chalk humps that appear in countless films and adverts. The cliffs are crumbling all the time, and the old Belle Tout lighthouse nearly went over the edge with them. In 1999 the whole building was jacked up and slid back about 17 metres from the brink. It is now a place to stay overnight. The red-and-white striped lighthouse at the foot of the cliff, built in 1902, is the one you see in photographs. Inland, the South Downs roll up to Ditchling Beacon, the county's highest point at 248 metres. It is a famously gruelling climb for cyclists on the London to Brighton ride.
1066 and all that, but not quite where you think
The Battle of Hastings was not fought at Hastings. It took place about seven miles inland, on a ridge where the town of Battle now stands. William the Conqueror later built Battle Abbey there as penance, and tradition places its high altar where King Harold fell. Hastings itself is a different kind of place today. On the shingle at the Stade, a fleet of small fishing boats is still launched straight from the beach, and tall black wooden net huts stand alongside. Every May Day the town holds the Jack in the Green festival, in which a giant figure covered in leaves is paraded through the streets. Hastings Pier won the Stirling Prize for architecture in 2017 after a community-led rebuild. Nearby Rye is a Cinque Port that is now well inland, a hilltop town of cobbled lanes such as Mermaid Street. Henry James lived at Lamb House there. Rye Bay is famous for its scallops.
Why Lewes sets fire to the Pope
Every 5 November, Lewes holds one of the biggest and most startling Bonfire Night celebrations in the world. Rival bonfire societies parade in costume with flaming torches, roll burning tar barrels and blow up fireworks in the narrow streets. Effigies are burned, traditionally including the Pope and whichever politician has annoyed people that year. The tradition goes back to the 17 Protestants burned at the stake in Lewes between 1555 and 1557 under Mary I. A memorial to them stands above the town on Cliffe Hill. The town has a record for rebellion. In 1264 Simon de Montfort defeated Henry III at the Battle of Lewes. Thomas Paine, author of Rights of Man, lived in Lewes in the 1770s and worked as an excise officer there. Lewes even has its own local currency, the Lewes Pound, launched in 2008. Harveys traces its business back to 1790, and its Bridge Wharf brewery beside the River Ouse dates from 1838.
Brighton: a prince, a pier and a seaside rock
Brighton became fashionable when the Prince Regent, later George IV, took a liking to it. His seaside palace, the Royal Pavilion, was transformed by John Nash into an Indian-style fantasy of domes and minarets, completed in 1823. It is still the most unlikely building on the south coast. The city also has Palace Pier, which opened in 1899. Volk's Electric Railway, which dates from 1883, runs along the seafront and is one of the oldest electric railways still operating. Brighton rock, a stick of hard sugar candy with the name running right through it, gave Graham Greene the title for his 1938 novel. Brighton & Hove Albion, nicknamed the Seagulls, reached the FA Cup final in 1983 and now play at the Amex Stadium in Falmer. Brighton Pride and the Brighton Festival give the city its reputation for being open-minded.
Pooh, Bloomsbury and a very successful hoax
Winnie-the-Pooh lives in Ashdown Forest. A. A. Milne wrote the stories while living at Cotchford Farm near Hartfield, and E. H. Shepard's drawings were based on the forest's heaths and clumps of pine. You can still visit the Pooh Bridge there. The county also drew the Bloomsbury Group. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant decorated Charleston Farmhouse near Firle, and Virginia Woolf lived at Monk's House in Rodmell. Rudyard Kipling wrote at Bateman's in Burwash. At Glyndebourne, John Christie founded an opera house in his country home in 1934. Then there is Piltdown Man. Fossil fragments found near Uckfield in 1912 were hailed as the missing link between apes and humans. It was not until 1953 that they were exposed as a fake, assembled from a medieval human skull and an orangutan jaw.
Racing, sunshine and a stubborn motto
Bexhill-on-Sea held what is generally considered Britain's first motor race on its seafront in 1902. The seafront also has the De La Warr Pavilion, a landmark of 1930s modernist design that opened in 1935. Eastbourne is known for its sunshine, its grand Victorian seafront and its pier. It also has a long tennis tradition at Devonshire Park. Sussex people are known for their dogged streak, summed up by the dialect motto 'We wunt be druv', meaning we won't be driven. Locally, Sussex Day is celebrated on 16 June. The county now has a good reputation for English sparkling wine, with vineyards such as Ridgeview near Ditchling on the chalk slopes of the Downs.