h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

East Sussex - home to one of the UK's most famous seaside towns, Brighton. Anybody out there who knows a lot about East Sussex who could write an entry about this county for us?

Paully

Desmond Lynam went to Varndean Grammar School in Brighton - and so did my Dad, who must have been three or four years above him. Although as my Dad was a prefect and doesn't remember him at all, Des must have been quite a well-behaved kid.

Hasn't Brighton become one of those unitary boroughs, and so no longer in East Sussex? Is this relevant?

Some stuff about ES off the top of my head, just to bump it up the list and above West Sussex in the list really!

Lewes is our county town. Its name comes from the Saxon for hill (Hlaew), and it is situated on a hill overlooking the River Ouse. Nice place, well worth a visit, but for heavens' sake don't try to drive there! Get the train instead. All the narrow streets (twittens in dialect) were not designed for cars, and the town regularly gets thoroughly ensnarled.

Further inland is the Weald of Sussex (another Saxon derivation, this time from Wald, meaning forest). Location of some of the earliest iron smelting (lovely word that) in the UK, and not a lot since. Rudyard Kipling lived at Batemans in Burwash, (pronounced Burrish in Sussex dialect) near Heathfield on the high Weald. Other ES towns on the Weald include Crowborough, where Arthur Conan Doyle lived, and Uckfield, where I don't think anything has ever happened.

Generally nothing ever happens in inland East Sussex, and I think it's all the better for it. The eastern coastal plain, home to the tourist hotspots of Eastbourne (unkindly known as God's Waiting Room due to the number of retired folk who move there for the clement climate), Bexhill and Hastings is just too frenetic for me.

Hope that is of some use


P

The last lot of local government changes really made things quite confusing, as at that point with the creation of some unitary authorities counties stopped being coherent geographical areas.

I think generally speaking, if a Unitary borough's been created, people still like to think of themselves as living in a county, and in cases like this you go back to the last time you were in one... if you try and tell my Dad Brighton's not in Sussex, you won't get very far!

Oh, and of course Eddie Izzard's from Rock and Roll old Bexhill-on-Sea...

Prompted by something GreyDesk said, I just posted this on the West Sussex thread, and realised it really should be here as well...

The boundary between Brighton and Hove - and East Sussex and West Sussex - is of course Dyke Road, over which residents of both towns and counties have been sneering at each other since time immemorial. My Grandma lived on Dyke Road for the last few years of her life, but on the East side, so *that* was all right

Other things about East Sussex... well, the Harvey's Brewery in Lewis and Donald Sinden comes from Ditchling. So, less impressively, does Jamie Theakston.

And should I mention 'Quadrophenia' at this point?

Some links:

A442739 The America Ground, Hastings, Sussex, England, UK
A211186 Bexhill-On-Sea, East Sussex, England (actually, that could do with updating)
A543106 Eastbourne, East Sussex, UK
A863110 The Effects of the Myxoma Virus on the South Downs
A1055918 Jack-in-the-Green Celebrations, Hastings, UK

Number Six - I think at least one of our Italics would be more than a little bit miffed if one of the Core Texts of Mod culture was left off an entry about Brighton and East Sussex!

Paully

I'm delighted to announce that we already have two County entries in Peer Review, waiting to receive any bouquets or brickbats that people might lob in their general direction! If you're currently either working on or contributing to a County entry of your own right now, you might like to have a quick look to see how some other researchers have tackled this challenge. They are: County Fermanagh (A6092606) and Norfolk (A6108473).

Hope you enjoy reading them!

Paully

Any volunteers for this one? We'd really like to close up these gaps, so we're offering T-shirts to the Researchers who can get them through PR.