County town: Chichester
Sussex was the kingdom of the South Saxons, one of the earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in the 5th century. It was organised into five administrative units called 'rapes' after the Norman Conquest, each centred on a coastal castle.
Sussex was the landing ground of the Norman Conquest — it was here that Harold met William at the Battle of Hastings in October 1066, and here that the Normans first imposed their extraordinary castle-building programme, with strongholds at Hastings, Pevensey, Lewes, Bramber, Arundel, and Chichester. The South Downs, a ridge of chalk running across the county from east to west, are one of England's most distinctive landscapes, their northern escarpment looking out across the Weald. The Weald — once the great Andreadsweald forest — was gradually cleared and settled. Brighton, transformed by royal patronage into a fashionable resort from the 1780s, gave the county its most famous town.
Sussex was surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror's great census of England. The survey recorded 323 settlements in the county, with details of their lords, landholders, population, and resources.
Browse 323 Domesday settlements in SussexEngland's 39 historic counties, established between the 9th and 12th centuries, are the framework through which English local history, legal records, and landscape have been organised for a thousand years. Most survive today as ceremonial counties, their boundaries deeply embedded in place identity.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Sussex draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.
Start your Aubrey report