16th June: Sussex Day

Sussex Day: Today is the county day for the English county of Sussex. It is a relatively recent celebration, having been suggested by Worthing resident Ian Steedman in 2006. This date was chosen because it is the feast day of the patron saint of Sussex, St Richard of Chichester. Here are ten more facts about Sussex:

1. The name Sussex comes from Old English and means land (or people) of the South Saxons. The South Saxons were a tribe from Germany who migrated to southern England in the 5th and 6th centuries.
2. It may well have been the first place in England to be populated by man. The oldest hominid remains yet found in Britain were discovered at Boxgrove near Chichester in 1993 - a leg bone about half a million years old.
3. Until 2000 there was just one city in Sussex - Chichester. Brighton and Hove was granted City status in 2000. Other well known places in the county include Hastings, Eastbourne, Crawley and Horsham. Gatwick Airport is also here.
4. Famous people who come from Sussex include Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hammond Innes, Leo Sayer, The Cure, The Levellers and astronaut Tim Peake. There have also been a lot of literary figures who have spent time in the county (perhaps because it is one of the most sunny and least rainy places in Britain). These include: William Blake (who wrote Jerusalem here), Alfred Tennyson, Oscar Wilde (who wrote The Importance of Being Earnest whilst living in Worthing in 1895 and named the hero Jack Worthing), Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound, John Galsworthy, Harold Pinter, H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Arthur Conan Doyle and AA Milne (the Winnie the Pooh stories are set in Ashdown Forest).
5. The Sussex dialect is alleged to have an especially large number of words for mud.
6. The county's motto is in dialect. It's We wunt be druv, which means "we will not be pushed around" and reflects the people's reputation for being independent. Its flag was adopted in 2011 and consists of six gold martlets (or heraldic swallows) on a blue background. There is an anthem, Sussex by the Sea, composed by William Ward-Higgs in 1907 and a county flower, the round-headed rampion, also known as the "Pride of Sussex", adopted in 2002.
7. Traditionally, Sussex has been divided into East Sussex and West Sussex. In olden times it was divided into four rapes, which in turn were split into several hundreds. At the time of the Norman Conquest, there were four rapes: Arundel, Lewes, Pevensey and Hastings. The rape of Bramber was created later in the 11th century and the rape of Chichester was created in the 13th century.
8. Talking of the Norman Conquest, Sussex was also where the Battle of Hastings. Other historic events which happened in the county include King Canute trying to stop the tide from coming in, England's first land based casino opening in Brighton in 1962, the National Trust buying their first property, the Clergy House in Alfriston in 1896 and Abba winning the Eurovision song contest in 1974.
9. Chichester Cathedral is the only one in the country to have an almshouse hospital attached (which is still operational) and a free standing bell tower. Another unique feature is a Marc Chagall stained-glass window. Arundel's Catholic Cathedral was built in 1868 and designed by Joseph Hansom - who also designed the first taxi.
10. Three United States counties (in Delaware, New Jersey, and Virginia), and a former county/land division of Western Australia, are named after Sussex.