ROTTINGDEAN, a parish in the.hundred of YOUNSMERE,
rape of LEWES, county of SUSSEX, 4 miles (E.
S. E.) from Brighton, containing 772 inhabitants. The
living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Lewes, and
diocese of Chichester, rated in the king's books at
£9. 10., and in the patronage of the Earl of Thanet.
The church, dedicated to St. Margaret, is in the early
style of English architecture, with a low massy tower
in the centre; it was originally a larger structure than
at present, and has lately undergone a thorough repair.
This place, in ancient records termed Rottington, was,
in the reign of Richard II., the landing-place of the
French, who, in revenge for their loss of the battle of
Cressy, burned Rye and Hastings, and would have also
destroyed Lewes, but for the gallant resistance made by
the prior of Lewes, Sir Thomas Cheney, and Sir John
Falseley, at the head of the armed peasantry, who attacked
and compelled them to retreat to their ships.
The village is pleasantly situated near the coast of the
English channel, on the Newhaven road, and is celebrated
for its wells, which are nearly empty at high water, but rise
as the tide ebbs, and which, from their salubrious qualities,
are in Considerable repute. It ,has within the last
few years become a bathing-place, frequented by such
families as prefer the privacy of a secluded .village to
the more open beach and gaiety of Brighton. The oldroad
hence to Brighton approached so close to the edge
of the cliff, which is here two hundred feet high, as frequently
to cause the most lamentable accidents to travellers
5 which circumstance has occasioned the formation
of a new one considerably to the northward, and by a
more circuitous, though pleasant, route. From Rottingdean
the cliffs gradually become more' elevated, as far
as Beachy Head; those called the Three Charles's, or
Cheorls, the highest on the Sussex coast, rising about
five hundred feet above the level of the sea. Two apartments
cut in the chalk rock under the cliff bear the
name of " Parson Danby's Holes," from his having
formed and occupied them, till he fell a victim to the
dampness of the situation. Semi-translucent pebbles
of agate and chalcedony, of a blueish grey colour, abound
on the sea-shore, which, when cut.and polished, are used
as ornaments in bracelets, &c., under the name of Rottingdean
Pebbles. In 1757, on opening, a tumulus in the
neighbourhood, a Roman dagger was discovered.