Sussex
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50 free Sussex trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sussex packs a remarkable amount of history into one stretch of the south coast of England. An invasion that changed the country began on its beaches, royal patronage turned a fishing town into the most fashionable resort of its day, and its chalk hills hide giants, forts and tall tales. This quiz covers the county's geography, from sea cliffs to ancient woodland, along with its castles, seaside towns, writers and artists, sport, food and folklore. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so each question doubles as a fun fact. It suits pub quiz setters, teachers, locals testing their home knowledge and visitors planning a trip to the South Downs or the coast.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Sussex headland near Eastbourne is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, with a lighthouse at its foot?
Beachy Head
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.
Q 02Which English king was killed fighting Duke William's Norman army in Sussex on 14 October 1066?
Harold Godwinson
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.
Q 03Which king, while still Prince of Wales, began Brighton's domed Royal Pavilion as his seaside pleasure palace?
George IV
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.
Q 04Which Sussex heathland inspired the Hundred Acre Wood in A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories?
Ashdown Forest
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.
Q 05Which pop group won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest when it was staged at the Brighton Dome in Sussex?
ABBA
ABBA won for Sweden with Waterloo, and Britain only hosted that year because Luxembourg, the previous winner, declined to stage the contest twice running.
Q 06Which Sussex village gave its name to a 1912 'missing link' skull that was exposed as a hoax in 1953?
Piltdown
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.
Q 07Which of London's major airports actually lies in West Sussex, on the edge of the town of Crawley?
Gatwick
Gatwick was built over a racecourse that staged a wartime substitute for the Grand National from 1916 to 1918.
Q 08Which chalk cliffs on the Sussex coast sometimes stand in for the White Cliffs of Dover in films?
Seven Sisters
Seven Sisters stay a brighter white than their Kent rivals because they are left to erode naturally, which is why film crews like them.
Q 09What does the Long Man of Wilmington, a giant chalk figure on the Sussex Downs, hold in each hand?
A staff
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.
Q 10Which Sussex seaside resort added Regis to its name after the reigning king convalesced nearby in 1929?
Bognor
Bognor took the suffix by royal consent after the monarch spent three months recovering at Craigweil House, a seaside mansion demolished ten years later.
Q 11Which royal was created Duke of Sussex on his wedding day in May 2018, reviving a title unused since 1843?
Prince Harry
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.
Q 12Which heraldic bird appears six times in gold on the blue flag of Sussex?
Martlet
Martlet is heraldry's name for a stylised swift drawn without feet, because the birds were once believed never to land.
Q 13Which art form has drawn summer audiences since 1934 to Glyndebourne, a country house near Lewes in Sussex?
Opera
Opera at Glyndebourne comes with a famously long interval, so that the audience can eat picnic dinners on the lawns.
Q 21Which cathedral city, built on the Roman town of Noviomagus Reginorum, is the county town of West Sussex?
Chichester
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.
Q 22Which novelist bought Monk's House in Rodmell, Sussex, in 1919 and wrote in a lodge in its garden?
Virginia Woolf
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.
Q 23Which wife of Henry VIII received a timber-framed house in Lewes in her annulment settlement but never visited it?
Anne of Cleves
Q 14Which Nobel Prize-winning author lived at Bateman's, a Jacobean house in Burwash, Sussex, from 1902 until his death?
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling wrote Puck of Pook's Hill at Bateman's, naming the book after a hill he could see from the house.
Q 15Which annual celebration is biggest in Lewes, Sussex, where rival societies parade through the streets in costume?
Guy Fawkes Night
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.
Q 16Which Sussex estate of the Duke of Richmond has hosted the Festival of Speed motoring hill climb since 1993?
Goodwood
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.
Q 17What is the nickname of Brighton & Hove Albion, the Sussex football club that plays in blue and white stripes?
The Seagulls
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.
Q 18Sussex has the oldest of England's county cricket clubs, founded in 1839 and based in which town?
Hove
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.
Q 19Which Sussex village holds the largest known Roman home in Britain, found in 1960 during digging for a water main?
Fishbourne
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.
Q 20Which Sussex castle, founded soon after the Norman Conquest, is the family seat of the Dukes of Norfolk?
Arundel
Arundel Castle's owner, the Duke of Norfolk, is also hereditary Earl Marshal, the official who organises coronations and state openings of Parliament.
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.
Q 24Which future American revolutionary pamphleteer worked as an excise officer in Lewes, Sussex, before emigrating in 1774?
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine crossed the Atlantic with Benjamin Franklin's help, and within two years his pamphlet Common Sense was rallying the colonies to independence.
Q 25Brighton's Royal Pavilion became a First World War hospital for wounded soldiers from which country's army?
India
India's sick and wounded were treated in the former palace from December 1914 to January 1916, among them Victoria Cross recipient Khudadad Khan.
Q 26In Sussex legend, who dug the deep dry valley north-west of Brighton so that the sea would flood the Weald?
The Devil
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.
Q 27Which whole fruit is cooked inside a modern Sussex pond pudding, a suet pastry filled with butter and sugar?
Lemon
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.
Q 28Which prime minister escaped unhurt when an IRA bomb tore through the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984?
Margaret Thatcher
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.
Q 29Which political force won its first-ever House of Commons seat at Brighton Pavilion in the 2010 general election?
Green Party
Green Party leader Caroline Lucas took the seat by just 1,252 votes and went on to hold it for fourteen years.
Q 30What name is given to the six ancient divisions of Sussex, each centred on its own Norman castle?
Rapes
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.