Woodingdean
Encyclopedia
Woodingdean is an eastern suburb of the city of Brighton and Hove, 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:...

, separated from the main part of the city by downland and the Brighton Racecourse
Brighton Racecourse
Brighton Racecourse is a horse racing course at Brighton, East Sussex in England, for flat races of up to about one and a half miles. The course is one of three courses in Britain which is not a circuit and forms a figure like three sides of a square, sloping, with wide left-hand turns and an...

.

Source of name

The place takes its name from a former farm at the southern end of the modern suburb, whose main claims to fame are to have been owned by the comedian Max Miller and used as a wartime retreat by the former emperor of Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

, Haile Selassie. The site of the main house is now Ovingdean Close, Ovingdean, and converted farm buildings remain in Ovingdean Road.

Beginnings

The earliest buildings in Woodingdean apart from scattered farm buildings were those of the former workhouse school in Warren Road, whose site is now a private hospital - The Nuffield. This contains the capped site of what is still, after 150 years, the deepest hand-dug well in the world.

Woodingdean in its present form began to grow up after the First World War in the northern part of the parish of Rottingdean. It consisted of plots of land on the South Downs
South Downs
The South Downs is a range of chalk hills that extends for about across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen Valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, East Sussex, in the east. It is bounded on its northern side by a steep escarpment, from whose...

 which had formerly been used for sheep-farming. These were sold by developers (often but not exclusively to returning soldiers) and most were originally smallholdings, e.g. poultry farms.

Development

The development of the present residential area very much mirrors that of neighbouring Ovingdean
Ovingdean
Ovingdean is a small formerly agricultural village which was absorbed into the borough of Brighton, East Sussex, UK, in 1928, and now forms part of the city of Brighton and Hove. It has expanded through the growth of residential streets on its eastern and southern sides, and now has a population of...

. From the 1920s building plots were sold off and first generation shacks and houses began to appear. The area was once locally notorious, like nearby Peacehaven, for the shacks that were put up on these plots, whose architectural styles ranged from Wooden Hut to Railway Carriage Body. Life in these plotlands was satirized in a stage play by H.F. Maltby
H.F. Maltby
Henry Francis Maltby was a prolific writer for the London stage and British cinema from after the First World War, until the 1950s. He also appeared in many films.-Life and career:...

 called What Might Happen (1927). In 1928, both Woodingdean and Ovingdean became part of Brighton County Borough, a move which heralded a substantial increase in residential development.

The area was extensively developed during the 1950s and 1960s when most of the roads in the north-eastern and southern ends of the village were built, including North Woodingdean and South Woodingdean Council estates, which give Woodingdean its distinctive layout - a kidney shaped suburb with private estates in the middle, and a layer of council housing round the edge backing on to the open Downs. There was also a small industrial estate at the north-western end, just off Falmer Road next to the North Woodingdean Estate. The main buildings were the Jaycee Furniture factory and Sunblest Bakery, closed in the 1990s and demolished in 2002.

Today

The area has a population in excess of 10,000 but despite its size still has some attributes of a village, including two sets of shops. Woodingdean today has dynamic social and religious communities of clubs, associations and organisations which also include sports and leisure facilities. There are two primary schools, Woodingdean Primary and Rudyard Kipling, and a special school, Downs View. There are places of worship for Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Christadelphians
Christadelphians
Christadelphians is a Christian group that developed in the United Kingdom and North America in the 19th century...

, Plymouth Brethren
Plymouth Brethren
The Plymouth Brethren is a conservative, Evangelical Christian movement, whose history can be traced to Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1820s. Although the group is notable for not taking any official "church name" to itself, and not having an official clergy or liturgy, the title "The Brethren," is...

, Roman Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...

. There are two pubs, the Downs Hotel in North Woodingdean, and the Toby (closed down) in South Woodingdean. North Woodingdean is the highest part of Brighton and Hove above sea-level.

External links

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