East Grinstead was a small town on the edge of Ashdown forest, whose significance sprang from its role as a centre of the Wealden iron industry, as well as from its proximity to London, only thirty miles away. J.C. Stenning, ‘Notes on East Grinstead’, Suss. Arch. Colls. xx. 132; E. Straker, Wealden Iron (1931), 223-41; H. Cleere and D.
Sussex was a county split in more ways than one. The Weald in the north and east, and the Downs in the south and west, each had their distinctive topography and economic base, particularly with the concentration of iron works in the Weald. Administratively, the county was also divided between east and west, a situation encouraged by the notoriously poor transport infrastructure, which adversely affected lateral movement; although the county’s four rivers, the Arun, Adur, Ouse and Rother, were all navigable, each ran from north to south.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries New Shoreham, at the mouth of the River Adur and on the narrow coastal plain between the sea and the South Downs, was among the most important Sussex ports, partly because it offered the shortest transit by land from the Channel to London. Like many neighbouring ports, however, it then suffered a devastating decline. William Camden described it as ‘ruined and under water’, and it was reported to have been exceedingly poor. W.
Seaford was an ancient harbour on the south coast of Sussex, on the edge of the South Downs. By the thirteenth century the town’s location at the then mouth of the river Ouse gave it some local importance as both a port and a fort, although it was never a major mercantile centre. Recs. of the Corporation of Seaford ed. F.W. Steer (1959), 52; M.A. Lower, Memorials of Seaford (1855), pp. v, 1. It was the most eminent of the ‘limb’ ports – attached to the Cinque Port of Hastings – and the only one which sent Members to Parliament.
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