Seven Sisters Cliffs
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.