The Shaping of the Sussex Landscape

How did Sussex get to look like what it looks like today?

What does its distinctive landscape tell us about how people lived and worked here in the past?

What impact have invasion, technology, war and, most importantly, sheep made on it?

Find out how today's landscape is the joint and ongoing creation of nature's long, slow relentless shift and humanity's incessant bodging and fidgeting with its environment.

To the untrained eye, the rolling Sussex landscape looks like a natural phenomenon that has been in place for millennia.

But as this fascinating guide shows, what we see today is the result of centuries of human activity and interference.

Did you know, for example, that Sussex was once the heart of the iron industry?

The clues are in the hammer ponds, found in what are now idyllic backwater villages and bosky woodland.

These were once Sussex's version of Blake's satanic mills. "The Shaping of the Sussex Landscape" will help train your historic eye to pierce through the layers of time, changing custom and technology, to discover the different ways the land has been used and really appreciate and understand the ingenious ways the landscape has been shaped and continues to be shaped to new needs and attitudes.