Balsdean is a deserted hamlet

Abandoned village

An abandoned village is a village that has, for some reason, been deserted. In many countries, and throughout history, thousands of villages were deserted for a variety of causes...

 in a remote downland

Downland

A downland is an area of open chalk hills. This term is especially used to describe the chalk countryside in southern England. Areas of downland are often referred to as Downs....

 valley east of Brighton

Brighton

Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

, East Sussex

East Sussex

East Sussex is a county in South East England. It is bordered by the counties of Kent, Surrey and West Sussex, and to the south by the English Channel.-History:...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, on record since about 1100. It was formerly a chapelry of the parish of Rottingdean

Rottingdean

Rottingdean is a coastal village next to the town of Brighton and technically within the city of Brighton and Hove, in East Sussex, on the south coast of England...

, and its territory touched that of the mother parish only at a single point. Despite its remoteness, it falls within the boundaries of the city of Brighton and Hove.

Bronze Age

The nearby hill known as the Bostle is the site of a Bronze Age cemetery consisting of a group of three large Bronze Barrows, with other barrows located nearby.

Roman

Roman occupation of the neighbourhood have been recorded by two notable finds. In 1757 a Roman dagger was found in a tumulus at Balsdean. In 1798 a stoneware urn or jar was unearthed, containing upwards of a thousand Roman copper coins. Some were faintly plated, or washed, with silver, and they were so little injured that their relief remained perfectly sharp. Therefore they could not have been much, if at all, in circulation. They were of the time of Valerian, who reigned A.D. 225, Gallienus, Claudius, Quintilius, Posthumus, Victorinus, Marius, and Tetricus.

Saxon

An Anglo-Saxon barrow cemetery consisting of 27 Early Anglo-Saxon barrows have been recorded in the vicinity of the Bronze Age cemetery on The Bostle.

Medieval

Balsdean consisted of two farms, Norton and Sutton. It was inhabited until the Second World War, when the population was evacuated and the buildings were used for target practice by Allied artillery

Artillery

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...

. These buildings, including the medieval chapel by then used as a barn, were never rebuilt and the people never returned. The only standing building in the valley now is a derelict post-war barn complex.

Later History

The manor-house of Sutton was used as a lunatic asylum (as it was called at the time) in the early nineteenth century.

There is a modern farm of the same name on the fringe of Rottingdean, and from there most of the ancient farmlands of Balsdean are still worked. Much of the former sheepdown, however, is now the site of the Brighton suburb of Woodingdean

Woodingdean

Woodingdean is an eastern suburb of the city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, separated from the main part of the city by downland and the Brighton Racecourse.-Source of name:...

, the building of which started around 1918.

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