The Southern railway runs from London to Hastings, St. Leonards, Bexhill, Eastbourne, to Lewes and New haven, to Brighton, to Shoreham, and to Arundel, Chichester and Selsey, with numerous branches and a connecting line along the coast. There are no good harbours, and none of the ports is of first importance. From Newhaven, however, a large trade is car ried on with France, and daily passenger steamers ply to Dieppe.
The area of the ancient county is 932,471 ac., with a population (1931) of 770,078. The earliest statement as to the population is made by Bede, who describes the county as containing in the year 681 land of 7,000 families ; allowing ten to a family (not an unreasonable estimate at that date), the total population would be 70,00o. In 1693 the county is stated to have contained 21,537 houses. If seven were allowed to a house at that date, the total population would be 150,759. It is curious, therefore, to observe that in 1801 the population was only 159311. The decline of the Sussex iron works probably accounts for the small increase of population during several centuries, although after the massacre of St. Bartholomew upwards of 1,500 Huguenots landed at Rye, and in 1685, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, other refugees arrived.
An act of Henry VII. (1504) directed that for convenience the county court should be held at Lewes as well as at Chichester, and this apparently gave rise to the division of Sussex into east and west parts, each of which is an administrative county. East
Sussex has an area of 530,555 ac., and West Sussex 401,916 acres.
Sussex includes the parliamentary borough of Brighton and the county boroughs of Hastings and Eastbourne. East Sussex con tains the municipal boroughs of Bexhill, Lewes and Rye. In West Sussex the municipal boroughs are Arundel, Chichester (a city), and Worthing. The ancient county, which is almost entirely in the diocese of Chichester, contains 377 ecclesiastical parishes or districts, wholly or in part. The total number of civil parishes is 338. Sussex is divided into the following parliamentary divisions : northern or East Grinstead, eastern or Rye, southern or East bourne, mid or Lewes, south-western or Chichester, north-western or Horsham and Worthing each returning one member; and con tains the parliamentary boroughs of Brighton, returning two members, and Hastings, returning one.
History, Antiquities and Topography of Sussex (Lewes, 1835) ; J. Dallaway, History of the Western Division of Sussex (London, 1815-32) ; M. A. Lower, History of Sussex (Lewes, 187o), Churches of Sussex (Brighton, 1872) and Worthies of Sussex (Lewes, 1865) ; Sussex Archaeological Society's Collections; W. E. Baxter, Domesday Book for . . . Sussex (Lewes, 1876) ; Sawyer, Sussex Natural History and Folklore (Brighton, 1883), Sussex Dialect (Brighton, 1884) and Sussex Songs and Music (Brighton, 1885) ; A. J. C. Hare, Sussex (London, 1894) ; A. Hadrian Allcroft, Earthwork of England (1908) ; Victoria County History u. (1905).