Worthing
Worthing is a seaside town and borough in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 113,094 and an area of, the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Hove built-up area, the 15th most populous urban area in the United Kingdom. Northern parts of the borough, including the Worthing Downland Estate, form part of the South Downs National Park. In 2019, the Art Deco Worthing Pier was dubbed the best in Britain.
Dating from around 4000 BC, the flint mines at Cissbury and nearby Church Hill, Blackpatch and Harrow Hill are amongst the earliest Neolithic monuments in Britain. The Iron Age hill fort of Cissbury Ring is one of Britain's largest. The recorded history of Worthing began with the Domesday Book. Worthing is historically part of Sussex, mostly in the rape of Bramber; Goring, which forms part of the rape of Arundel, was incorporated in 1929. Worthing was a small mackerel fishing hamlet for many centuries until, in the late 18th century, it developed into an elegant Georgian seaside resort and attracted the well-known and wealthy of the day. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the area was one of Britain's chief market gardening centres.
Modern Worthing has a large service industry, particularly in financial services. It has three theatres and one of Britain's oldest cinemas, the Dome. Writers Oscar Wilde and Harold Pinter lived and worked in the town.
Etymology
The earliest known appearance of the name of Worthing is Wyrtingas, from circa AD 960. It was listed as Ordinges or Wordinges in the Domesday Book of 1086, and was subsequently known as Wuroininege, Wurdingg, Wording or Wurthing, Worthinges, Wyrthyng, Worthen and Weorðingas. The modern name Worthing was first documented in AD 1297.The etymology of the root Worth- is uncertain. Wyrt is the Old English word for "plant," "vegetable," "herb" or "spice," though there is no obvious connection with the name of the town. Additionally, the "y" was a front-loaded vowel that was indistinguishable from "i" by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period and the spelling never evolved in that direction. The more obvious Middle English worth is not likely as well, as there was a dramatic Norman language influence on the spelling at the time of the Domesday Book. A more probable root is the word for an Anglo-Saxon goddess - Wyrd, known in Norse mythology as Urðr - with a shift of the alveolar consonant d to t as evidenced by the eleventh century evolution of the word.
The suffix -ing is a cognate of inge, an ethnonym for the Germanic Ingaevones peoples, said variously to mean "of Yngvi" - of Freyr in Norse mythology, "family, people or followers of" or a genitive plural form of an inhabitant appellation.
History
From around 4000 BC, the South Downs above Worthing was Britain's earliest and largest flint-mining area, with four of the UK's 14 known flint mines lying within of the centre of Worthing. The flint mine at Cissbury, the highest point in the borough of Worthing, had around 270 mine shafts, some up to deep, dug using tools made from the bone and antlers of red deer. More than an industrial complex, the site probably had sacred and ritualistic meaning to Neolithic people perhaps due to its stark white colour and its association with the Earth's surface and the entrance to the underworld. Graffiti or art scratched into the chalk at Cissbury and nearby Harrow Hill may be the earliest dateable examples of Neolithic art in Britain. An excavation at Little High Street dates the earliest remains from Worthing town centre to the Bronze Age. There is also an important Bronze Age hill fort on the western fringes of the modern borough at Highdown Hill.During the Iron Age, one of Britain's largest hill forts was built at Cissbury Ring. The area was part of the civitas of the Regni during the Romano-British period. Several of the borough's roads date from this era and lie in a grid layout known as centuriation. A Romano-British farmstead once stood in the centre of the town, at a site close to Worthing Town Hall. In the 5th and 6th centuries, the area became part of the Kingdom of Sussex. The place names of the area, including the name Worthing itself, date from this period.
Worthing remained an agricultural and fishing hamlet for centuries until the arrival of wealthy visitors in the 1750s. Princess Amelia stayed in the town in 1798 and the fashionable and wealthy continued to stay in Worthing, which became a town in 1803. The town expanded and elegant developments such as Park Crescent and Liverpool Terrace were begun. The area was a stronghold of smugglers in the 19th century and was the site of rioting by the Skeleton Army in the 1880s.
Oscar Wilde holidayed in the town in 1893 and 1894, writing the Importance of Being Earnest during his second visit. The town was home to several literary figures in the 20th century, including Nobel Prize-winner Harold Pinter. On 9 October 1934 violent confrontations took place in the town between protestors and Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists which subsequently became known as the Battle of South Street. During the Second World War, Worthing was home to several allied military divisions in preparation for the D-Day landings, in particular many Canadian divisions.
Worthing became the world's 229th Transition Town in October 2009. The project explored the town's transition to life after oil, and was established by local residents as a way of planning the town's Energy Descent Action Plan.
Governance
Local government for the borough of Worthing is shared between Worthing Borough Council and West Sussex County Council in a two-tier structure. Worthing Borough Council partners with neighbouring local authorities, as part of Adur and Worthing Councils and the Greater Brighton City Region. The borough is divided into 13 wards, with 11 returning three councillors and two returning two councillors to form a total council of 37 members. The borough is unparished. At the 2022 election the Labour Party won control of the council for the first time, ending 18 years of Conservative administration.The town currently returns nine councillors from nine single-member electoral divisions to West Sussex County Council out of a total of 70. At the 2021 West Sussex County Council election, Worthing returned five Labour and four Conservative councillors. The council is responsible for services including school education, social care and highways. The county council has been controlled by the Conservative Party since 1974, with the exception of the period 1993—97 when the council was under no overall control.
Since 2014, Worthing has also been within the area of the Greater Brighton City Region. The borough is represented on the City Region's Economic Board by the leader of the borough council.
The town has two Members of Parliament : Beccy Cooper for Worthing West and Tom Rutland for East Worthing and Shoreham.
At the 2017 general election, the East Worthing and Shoreham seat became a marginal seat for the first time, with both seats having been held by their incumbents since the seats' creation before the 1997 general election. From 1945 to 1997 Worthing returned one MP. From 1945 until 2024 Worthing had always returned Conservative MPs. Until 1945 Worthing formed part of the Horsham and Worthing parliamentary constituency.
Geography
Worthing is situated in West Sussex in South East England, south of London and west of Brighton and Hove. Historically within Sussex, in the rape of Bramber, Worthing is built on the South Coast Plain facing the English Channel. To the north of the urban area are the chalk hills of the South Downs, which form a National Park. The suburbs of High Salvington and Findon Valley climb the lower slopes of the Downs, reaching up to the contour line, whereas the highest point in the borough reaches at Cissbury Ring. Land at Cissbury Ring and the adjacent publicly owned Worthing Downland Estate together form a area of open access land within the borough. Further high points are at West Hill north-west of High Salvington and at Highdown Hill on the boundary with Ferring. Cissbury Ring forms the only Site of Special Scientific Interest in the borough.With a population of about 200,000, the Centre for Cities identifies the wider primary urban area of Worthing as one of the 63 largest cities and towns in the UK. Extending from Littlehampton to Lancing, the primary urban area is roughly equivalent to the present day borough and the area administered from 1933 to 1974 as the Worthing Rural District, or the 01903 Worthing telephone code area. Worthing forms the second-largest part of the Brighton and Hove built-up area, England's 12th largest conurbation, with a population in 2011 of over 470,000. The borough of Worthing is bordered by the West Sussex local authority districts of Arun in the north and west, and Adur in the east.
Worthing is situated on a mix of two beds of sedimentary rock. The large part of the town, including the town centre, is built upon chalk, with a bed of London clay found in a band heading west from Lancing through Broadwater and Durrington.
Worthing lies roughly midway between the Rivers Arun and Adur. The culverted Teville Stream and the partially-culverted Ferring Rife run through the town. One of the Ferring Rife's sources is in Titnore Wood, a Site of Nature Conservation Interest and one of the last remaining blocks of ancient woodland on the coastal plain.
The development along the coastal strip is interrupted by strategic gaps at the borough boundaries in the east and west, referred to as the Goring Gap and the Sompting Gap. Each gap falling largely outside the borough boundaries. The borough of Worthing contains no nature reserves: the nearest is Widewater Lagoon in Lancing.