Things to do in East Sussex

Alfriston is one of the most beautiful and most completely preserved medieval villages in East Sussex, a settlement in the Cuckmere Valley below the South Downs whose combination of the medieval church of St Andrew, the fourteenth-century Clergy House, the ancient Star Inn and the village layout of timber-framed buildings creates a scene of English village perfection that has attracted visitors since the Victorian period. The Clergy House, now managed by the National Trust, was the first building the Trust ever purchased, acquired in 1896 for just £10, and its preservation provides a direct connection to the origins of the conservation movement in England. The Church of St Andrew, built from the distinctive local flint in the Perpendicular Gothic style in the late fourteenth century, is known as the Cathedral of the South Downs for its size and quality relative to the small community it serves. The church is set on a raised circular churchyard that may indicate pre-Christian sacred site use, and the combination of the church, the Clergy House and the surrounding medieval street plan creates a remarkable concentration of fourteenth and fifteenth century domestic and ecclesiastical architecture. The village is set at the point where the South Downs Way crosses the Cuckmere River, and the walking south along the river to the Cuckmere Haven and the Seven Sisters cliffs provides one of the finest short day walks in Sussex. The combination of the medieval village, the downland walking and the coastal scenery accessible nearby makes Alfriston one of the most richly rewarding small destinations in the southeast.

Arundel Castle in West Sussex is one of the most imposing and most completely realised medieval castle complexes in England, a seat of the Dukes of Norfolk and their Howard ancestors that dominates the town of Arundel and the Arun Valley in a composition of towers and battlements restored and augmented in the Victorian period to create one of the most romantically appealing castle silhouettes in the south of England. The castle is among the few remaining in England still occupied by the same family as in the medieval period, the Howards having held the castle and the hereditary office of Earl Marshal of England for over 400 years. The castle has medieval origins in the Norman conquest, when Roger de Montgomery built the original motte and bailey castle shortly after 1066. The subsequent development over several centuries produced the combination of keep, gatehouse, walls and residential buildings that form the core of the current complex, substantially augmented and restored by the fifteenth Duke of Norfolk in the late nineteenth century in one of the most ambitious Victorian Gothic restoration projects in the country. The result is a castle that appears more completely medieval than the original fabric alone would justify but that achieves a visual coherence and dramatic quality that makes it one of the most impressive castle experiences in England. The interior of the castle contains a remarkable collection of paintings, furniture and heraldic objects reflecting the long history of the Norfolk family, and the grounds include a Victorian walled garden and a glasshouse of considerable horticultural interest.

Birling Gap is a natural break in the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs on the East Sussex coast where a small settlement of beach cottages, a National Trust visitor centre and a set of steps to the beach provide the most accessible point of entry to the famous cliff landscape between Beachy Head and Cuckmere Haven. The gap has been used as a landing and launch point for small vessels since at least medieval times, and the cluster of Victorian coastguard cottages that remain on the clifftop are among the last survivors of what was once a larger community living on this exposed chalk downland. The cliffs at Birling Gap are eroding rapidly and dramatically. The chalk is relatively soft compared to the harder rocks of the west country coast and the combination of storm wave action, freeze-thaw weathering of the cliff face and the undercutting of the cliff base produces rates of erosion that have been accelerating in recent decades. One of the original row of coastguard cottages has already fallen into the sea and the remaining cottages are threatened, making Birling Gap a powerful and tangible illustration of the processes of coastal change that are reshaping much of the English coastline. The National Trust, which owns the site, has taken the decision not to defend the clifftop against erosion but to allow the natural process to continue, managing the visitor infrastructure by retreating landward as the cliff edge advances. The beach at Birling Gap is a shingle beach backed by chalk cliffs, accessible by the steep metal staircase at low and mid tide. The rock pools exposed at low tide in the chalk ledges are rich with marine life and provide excellent snorkelling and rock pooling. The walking along the clifftop in both directions is outstanding, with the Seven Sisters undulating chalk cliff ridge extending westward toward Cuckmere Haven and the views seaward encompassing the busy shipping lane of the English Channel.

Brighton Palace Pier is the most famous and most visited pleasure pier in Britain, a Victorian masterpiece of seaside engineering stretching more than half a kilometre into the English Channel from the Brighton seafront and supporting a full complement of amusements, fairground rides, fast food outlets and the traditional pleasures of the seaside pier that have been entertaining visitors since its opening in 1899. The pier is one of the defining images of Brighton and of British seaside culture more broadly, its elaborate oriental-influenced pavilions and towers at the pierhead, illuminated at night in a blaze of light reflected in the sea below, representing the Victorian ambition to create pleasure architecture of theatrical extravagance. The pier was built by the Brighton Marine Palace and Pier Company between 1891 and 1899 to replace the earlier Chain Pier that had stood nearby until its destruction in a storm in 1896. The design by Richard St George Moore drew on the Moorish and oriental decorative traditions that were fashionable in seaside entertainment architecture of the period, producing a building that combined structural engineering ambition with an exuberant visual character quite different from the functionalism of most industrial construction of the era. The ornate pavilions and towers at the pierhead, the fish scale roof tiles and the cast iron supporting structure constitute one of the most complete examples of Victorian pleasure architecture remaining in Britain. The current programme of attractions on the pier, while firmly in the tradition of popular seaside entertainment, has been developed and updated with modern fairground rides, a helter-skelter and various thrill attractions alongside the traditional slot machines and food stalls. The views from the end of the pier back toward the Brighton seafront, with the i360 observation tower rising above the art deco terraces of the seafront, are among the finest of any seaside town in England. Brighton's position as a major arts, culture and nightlife destination adds considerable depth to the pier as a day trip attraction, and the combination of beach, pier, Pavilion and the independent shops of the Lanes makes Brighton one of the most rewarding day trips from London.

Cuckmere Haven at the mouth of the Cuckmere River in East Sussex is one of the finest and most celebrated coastal landscapes in southeast England, a wide floodplain valley where the Cuckmere meanders through water meadows to the sea between the white chalk cliffs of the Seven Sisters on the east and the lower ground of the Seaford Head nature reserve on the west. The combination of the meandering river, the floodplain grassland and the dramatic backdrop of the Seven Sisters cliffs creates one of the most photographed and most widely recognised coastal scenes in England. The Cuckmere floodplain is managed by the South Downs National Park as a nature reserve and the water meadows support a rich community of wetland birds and plants in a landscape that has been largely protected from development by the combined designation of the National Park and the Heritage Coast. The estuary at Cuckmere Haven is one of the few undeveloped estuaries remaining on the south coast, its character as a natural shingle beach at the river mouth providing a contrast to the managed harbours and resorts of the surrounding coast. The coastal path from Cuckmere Haven east along the top of the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs is one of the classic walks of the south coast, the succession of white chalk headlands providing spectacular views across the English Channel to the French coast visible on clear days. The walk west from the haven across Seaford Head provides equally excellent cliff scenery above the Ouse estuary.

Devil's Dyke is a dramatic dry valley on the South Downs escarpment north of Brighton, a great V-shaped combe carved by periglacial processes during the last Ice Age that provides the most spectacular single viewpoint on the South Downs and one of the finest viewpoints in the southeast of England. The open chalk grassland of the dyke slopes and the surrounding escarpment provides excellent walking on the South Downs Way and the views northward across the Weald and southward toward the coast are among the most extensive available from any point on the South Downs. The chalk grassland of the Devil's Dyke slopes is one of the finest remaining examples of traditional downland habitat in East Sussex, supporting the characteristic community of chalk-loving plants including common spotted orchid, cowslip, stemless thistle and various chalk grassland grasses, and the butterflies associated with this habitat including chalkhill blue, dark green fritillary and marbled white. The National Trust manages the site and the long-running programme of grazing management has restored much of the traditional grassland character that was damaged by the arable conversion of the mid-twentieth century. The Victorian entrepreneur who built the Grand Hotel above the dyke also installed a funicular railway and a cable car across the valley in the 1890s, evidence of the dyke's long history as a tourist destination for visitors from Brighton. The views and the walking remain the principal attractions today, the funicular and cable car having long since disappeared.

The Seven Sisters are a succession of seven chalk headlands between Cuckmere Haven and Birling Gap on the East Sussex coast, white chalk cliffs of considerable height and visual drama that provide one of the most celebrated and most photographed stretches of coastline in England. The cliffs form the eastward continuation of the South Downs as they meet the sea, the underlying chalk of the downs exposed in spectacular cross-section where the land ends and the Channel begins. The Seven Sisters Country Park manages the land behind the clifftop and the valley of the Cuckmere River that provides the principal access to the site. The view of the Seven Sisters from the western bank of the Cuckmere at Cuckmere Haven, looking east along the succession of cliff faces rising and falling in their distinctive undulating profile, is one of the most famous views in England and has appeared in countless films, television productions and advertising campaigns that require the visual shorthand of England's white cliffs. The cliffs here are among the fastest-eroding in England, the relative softness of the Cretaceous chalk and the exposure to Channel storm waves producing rates of cliff retreat that make the coastline visibly different over periods of a few decades. The South Downs Way national trail follows the clifftop between Cuckmere Haven and Eastbourne, providing a clifftop walk of exceptional quality with continuous Channel views and the succession of headlands and bays creating a constantly varying perspective. The descent to the beach at Birling Gap, where the National Trust maintains the last remaining section of cliff-edge accessible beach, provides the most direct encounter with the chalk at beach level. Belle Tout lighthouse, decommissioned in 1902 and now a bed and breakfast, stands on the clifftop above Birling Gap in one of the most dramatically positioned small buildings on the English coast.

The South Downs Way is an 100-mile national trail running along the chalk escarpment of the South Downs from Winchester in Hampshire to Eastbourne in East Sussex, one of the finest long-distance walking and cycling routes in southern England. The trail traverses the entire length of the South Downs National Park along the ridge of the chalk downs, providing continuous open views across the Weald to the north and the English Channel to the south in a landscape of great beauty and historical depth. The chalk downland traversed by the route is one of the most characteristic and most threatened landscapes of lowland England, the distinctive combination of short-turf grassland maintained by centuries of sheep grazing, the ancient trackways and drove roads along the ridge, the dew ponds that provided water for livestock before piped supply, and the many Bronze Age barrows and earthworks visible along the high ground creating a landscape that preserves in its physical fabric the entire agricultural and social history of the English downland. The views from the South Downs Way are exceptional throughout its length but particularly fine on the western sections between Winchester and Petersfield, where the ridge provides panoramas across Hampshire and Surrey, and on the eastern section above the Seven Sisters and Beachy Head, where the full height of the chalk cliffs is visible at their most dramatic. The short chalk grassland of the downland supports the remaining colonies of Adonis blue, chalkhill blue and other butterfly species that have almost disappeared from the wider southern English countryside. The trail is equally popular with cyclists, the chalky surface of many sections providing reasonable cycling conditions in dry weather and the long-distance character of the route suitable for two or three-day cycling expeditions with accommodation in the villages below the downs.