50 Fun Facts About Sussex

Which Sussex headland near Eastbourne is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, with a lighthouse at its foot?

Beachy Head has nothing to do with beaches: the name is a corruption of the French for beautiful headland, and the cliff rises 162 metres above the sea.

Which English king was killed fighting Duke William's Norman army in Sussex on 14 October 1066?

Harold Godwinson was the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England, and the victor founded Battle Abbey with its high altar on the spot where he is said to have fallen.

Which king, while still Prince of Wales, began Brighton's domed Royal Pavilion as his seaside pleasure palace?

George IV had the architect John Nash add the exotic domes and minarets, and Queen Victoria, who preferred the Isle of Wight, later sold the palace to the town.

Which Sussex heathland inspired the Hundred Acre Wood in A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories?

Ashdown Forest was where Milne took his son Christopher Robin walking from the family's farm on its northern edge, and a Poohsticks Bridge still stands nearby.

Which pop group won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest when it was staged at the Brighton Dome in Sussex?

ABBA won for Sweden with Waterloo, and Britain only hosted that year because Luxembourg, the previous winner, declined to stage the contest twice running.

Which Sussex village gave its name to a 1912 'missing link' skull that was exposed as a hoax in 1953?

Piltdown Man took 41 years to be exposed as a forgery: the 'early human' was a medieval human skull paired with an orangutan's jaw.

Which of London's major airports actually lies in West Sussex, on the edge of the town of Crawley?

Gatwick was built over a racecourse that staged a wartime substitute for the Grand National from 1916 to 1918.

Which chalk cliffs on the Sussex coast sometimes stand in for the White Cliffs of Dover in films?

Seven Sisters stay a brighter white than their Kent rivals because they are left to erode naturally, which is why film crews like them.

What does the Long Man of Wilmington, a giant chalk figure on the Sussex Downs, hold in each hand?

A staff in each hand flanks the 72-metre Long Man, whose body is deliberately stretched so that it looks in proportion when viewed from below.

Which Sussex seaside resort added Regis to its name after the reigning king convalesced nearby in 1929?

Bognor took the suffix by royal consent after the monarch spent three months recovering at Craigweil House, a seaside mansion demolished ten years later.

Which royal was created Duke of Sussex on his wedding day in May 2018, reviving a title unused since 1843?

Prince Harry became only the second holder: the dukedom was created in 1801 for Augustus Frederick, a son of the reigning king, and lapsed on his death.

Which heraldic bird appears six times in gold on the blue flag of Sussex?

Martlet is heraldry's name for a stylised swift drawn without feet, because the birds were once believed never to land.

Which art form has drawn summer audiences since 1934 to Glyndebourne, a country house near Lewes in Sussex?

Opera at Glyndebourne comes with a famously long interval, so that the audience can eat picnic dinners on the lawns.

Which Nobel Prize-winning author lived at Bateman's, a Jacobean house in Burwash, Sussex, from 1902 until his death?

Rudyard Kipling wrote Puck of Pook's Hill at Bateman's, naming the book after a hill he could see from the house.

Which annual celebration is biggest in Lewes, Sussex, where rival societies parade through the streets in costume?

Guy Fawkes Night in Lewes is the largest in the United Kingdom, and it also remembers seventeen Protestant martyrs burned at the stake in the town.

Which Sussex estate of the Duke of Richmond has hosted the Festival of Speed motoring hill climb since 1993?

Goodwood is also home to the Rolls-Royce car factory, which opened on a corner of the estate in 2003 after BMW bought the brand.

What is the nickname of Brighton & Hove Albion, the Sussex football club that plays in blue and white stripes?

The Seagulls came within one match of losing their Football League place in 1997, surviving with a 1–1 draw at Hereford United on the final day.

Sussex has the oldest of England's county cricket clubs, founded in 1839 and based in which town?

Hove is home to England's oldest county club, which had to wait until 2003, 164 years after its founding, to win a first official Championship title.

Which Sussex village holds the largest known Roman home in Britain, found in 1960 during digging for a water main?

Fishbourne Roman Palace is the largest Roman residence known north of the Alps, begun around AD 75, barely thirty years after the conquest of Britain.

Which Sussex castle, founded soon after the Norman Conquest, is the family seat of the Dukes of Norfolk?

Arundel Castle's owner, the Duke of Norfolk, is also hereditary Earl Marshal, the official who organises coronations and state openings of Parliament.

Which cathedral city, built on the Roman town of Noviomagus Reginorum, is the county town of West Sussex?

Chichester is West Sussex's only city, and its cathedral spire is the only one on a medieval English cathedral that can be seen from the sea.

Which novelist bought Monk's House in Rodmell, Sussex, in 1919 and wrote in a lodge in its garden?

Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard paid £700 for the house at auction, and many of her novels took shape in the small wooden lodge.

Which wife of Henry VIII received a timber-framed house in Lewes in her annulment settlement but never visited it?

Anne of Cleves was married to Henry for only six months, yet she did well from the split and was the last of his six wives to die.

Which future American revolutionary pamphleteer worked as an excise officer in Lewes, Sussex, before emigrating in 1774?

Thomas Paine crossed the Atlantic with Benjamin Franklin's help, and within two years his pamphlet Common Sense was rallying the colonies to independence.

Brighton's Royal Pavilion became a First World War hospital for wounded soldiers from which country's army?

India's sick and wounded were treated in the former palace from December 1914 to January 1916, among them Victoria Cross recipient Khudadad Khan.

In Sussex legend, who dug the deep dry valley north-west of Brighton so that the sea would flood the Weald?

The Devil gave Devil's Dyke its name; in one telling a lit candle and a crowing cock fooled him into thinking dawn had broken, and he fled.

Which whole fruit is cooked inside a modern Sussex pond pudding, a suet pastry filled with butter and sugar?

Lemon is a surprisingly recent addition: the first recorded recipe with a whole one inside appeared only in 1974, in Jane Grigson's English Food.

Which prime minister escaped unhurt when an IRA bomb tore through the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984?

Margaret Thatcher walked on stage to a standing ovation when the party conference opened at 9:30 that same morning, only hours after the blast.

Which political force won its first-ever House of Commons seat at Brighton Pavilion in the 2010 general election?

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas took the seat by just 1,252 votes and went on to hold it for fourteen years.

What name is given to the six ancient divisions of Sussex, each centred on its own Norman castle?

Rapes have a close cousin in the lathes of neighbouring Kent, and the six gold birds on the Sussex flag are said to stand for them.

At which Sussex bay, guarded by a ruined Roman fort, did William the Conqueror land his invasion army in 1066?

Pevensey's fort, known to the Romans as Anderitum, was already nearly 800 years old when the Normans moved in and made it a stronghold.

Which moated Sussex castle did Sir Edward Dalyngrigge build in 1385, ostensibly to resist a French invasion?

Bodiam Castle was the work of a younger son who inherited nothing and had to make his own fortune before building it with the king's permission.

Which 15th-century brick castle in Sussex was home to the Royal Greenwich Observatory from 1957 until 1988?

Herstmonceux is one of the oldest significant brick buildings still standing in England, and the Admiralty bought it for the astronomers in 1946.

Which rebel baron captured King Henry III at the Battle of Lewes in 1264 and became England's uncrowned ruler?

Simon de Montfort forced the king to sign the Mise of Lewes, giving up many royal powers, and in 1265 summoned a parliament that still carries his name.

Which large bird raised wild chicks in Britain in 2020 for the first time in about 600 years, at Knepp in Sussex?

White stork chicks hatched on a former intensive farm given over to rewilding, and Sussex was chosen for the project because of its old links with the bird.

Which Romantic poet, who died at 29 in a boating accident off Italy, was born at Field Place in Warnham, Sussex?

Percy Shelley spent school holidays at the Sussex manor terrifying his younger siblings with experiments involving gunpowder and acids.

Which Sussex resort did Oscar Wilde honour in the surname of Jack, hero of The Importance of Being Earnest?

Worthing was where Wilde wrote the comedy, during a seaside stay in the summer of 1894.

Which inventor built his first working television set, partly from an old hatbox, while living in Hastings in the 1920s?

John Logie Baird had moved to the Sussex coast for his health, and his contraption also used darning needles, bicycle lamp lenses and a tea chest.

What kind of structures are Jack and Jill, the well-known pair on the South Downs above Clayton, Sussex?

Windmills they are, and Jill is an incomer: she stood in Brighton until 1852, when a team of horses and oxen hauled her to Clayton.

Which bat-and-ball sport, played in Sussex since at least the 15th century, is said to have begun among milkmaids?

Stoolball is said to have started with milkmaids using their milking stools as the target and a milk bowl as the bat.

Which 13th-century bishop is the patron saint of Sussex, with his feast on 16 June kept as Sussex Day?

St Richard fell out with Henry III, who forbade anyone to house or feed him, so the new bishop had to travel around Sussex entirely on foot.

Which blue wildflower, nicknamed the Pride of Sussex, gave its name to the wind farm off the county's coast?

Rampion, in full the round-headed rampion, is the county flower, and the wind farm's name was a local schoolgirl's suggestion that won a public vote.

Which Sussex garden near Ardingly, managed by Kew, houses the Millennium Seed Bank in a building opened in 2000?

Wakehurst is owned by the National Trust but has been leased to Kew since 1965, and its grounds also hold a late 16th-century mansion.

What shape is the tomb that Georgian folly-builder 'Mad Jack' Fuller built for himself in Brightling churchyard, Sussex?

A pyramid, put up 23 years before he needed it; local legend long claimed he sat inside at a table with a cooked chicken and a bottle of claret.

Which hill near Haslemere, a favourite walk of the poet Tennyson, is the highest point in Sussex?

Blackdown rises to about 280 metres on the Surrey border, and the lane leading up it is still named after the poet, who lived on the hill.

Which 1979 film, based on a 1973 album by The Who, sends rival mods and rockers to Brighton for a bank holiday?

Quadrophenia is not a musical and the band never appears in it, yet a narrow alley used for one scene has become a fan landmark in Brighton.

Which equestrian sport stages its British Derby at Hickstead, a Sussex arena created in 1960?

Show jumping's Derby at Hickstead, first held in 1961, is famous for the Derby Bank, a slope of 10 feet 6 inches that horses must descend.

Which BBC series has been filmed since 2017 in a barn at the Weald and Downland Living Museum in Sussex?

The Repair Shop suits its setting: the open-air museum is itself a collection of rescued rural buildings, taken down elsewhere and re-erected on the site.

Which metal did the charcoal-fired furnaces of the Sussex Weald produce, supplying most British cannon until about 1770?

Iron from the Weald also went into nails, hinges and household pots, and the region's first recorded blast furnace was at Buxted in Sussex in 1490.

Which Sussex resort staged Britain's first motor races along its seafront parade in May 1902?

Bexhill held the races to celebrate becoming a borough, and signs at the edge of town call it the birthplace of British motor racing.