Sussex

In the seventeenth century Horsham, located on the river Arun and on the edge of St Leonard’s Forest, was one of the wealthiest and most prominent Sussex towns; as a centre of the Wealden iron industry, and as the nearest to London, it attracted merchants from the capital to its market. Its accessibility led to its becoming one of the main administrative centres in the county, providing a venue for both assizes and quarter sessions, as well as the home of the county gaol. D.E. Hurst, Hist. and Antiquities of Horsham (1889), 27, 158-65; VCH Suss. vi, pt. 2, pp.

Hastings, in the Bourne valley on the east Sussex coast, was one of the original Cinque Ports, and a centre for fishing and for the transport of commodities related to the iron industry, as well as a focal point of the county’s sea defences. The town’s status as a port had been declining since the middle ages, however, as Rye and Winchelsea increased in importance, and much of the commerce with which Hastings was involved appears to have been coastal. The harbour had decayed significantly by the mid-sixteenth century, attempts to raise money for repairs having proved fruitless.

Bramber lay four miles from the sea on the west bank of the River Adur, and on the edge of a tidal marsh. A Norman settlement, it was overshadowed by two neighbouring boroughs, Steyning, a mile to the north west, and Shoreham, four miles to the south east. The town’s castle had ceased to be occupied by the early sixteenth century; its role as a port was undermined by both its inaccessibility and the rise of Shoreham, such that only local barge trade remained; and the market had lapsed by 1600. VCH Suss. vi, pt.

Situated where the South Downs met the Sussex Weald, west of the River Adur, Steyning was one of the county’s many declining ports, overshadowed by New Shoreham, a few miles downstream at the mouth of the river. By the seventeenth century its economy relied on its role as a market town for the area’s arable produce. VCH Suss. vi(i). 220, 232-4. The population may be gauged from the 203 adult males who took the Protestation in 1642 and the recording of 290 conformists and ten non-conformists in the 1676 Compton census. West Suss.

Arundel’s importance lay in its advantageous defensive position on the edge of the South Downs, at the lowest crossing point of the wide tidal estuary of the Arun. Although a market town and, joined with Chichester, a port of some importance for the timber trade, it was, as William Camden recognised, ‘greater in fame than in fact’. The borough was always dominated by its castle, and as a consequence, by the Howards, earls of Arundel, who held the honour of Arundel, of which the castle, manor and borough were part. VCH Suss. v, pt. 1, 11-13, 63-6; Tierney, Hist. and Antiq.

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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