County Tour

Welcome to the County Tour pages. Here you can take a tour around the beautiful county of West Sussex, its many towns and villages and places to visit. We also provide a glimpse into the area specific to Seaside Hospital Radio, consisting of The Worthing Borough and Adur District, with pages dedicated to each key town in these areas.

map of west sussex

Above: Map of West Sussex. Click on a location to learn more or use the links to the left side of this page.

Please be aware that many of the pages in this section are still being updated.

We hope you enjoy your visit to our beautiful part of England!

Wider West Sussex

The County of West Sussex in the South of England borders East Sussex (with Brighton and Hove), Hampshire and Surrey. Sussex was divided into East and West in the 12th century, and obtained separate county councils in 1888, but West Sussex stayed as a single ceremonial county (areas of England that are appointed a Lord-Lieutenant or 'Queen's representative') until 1974 when the Local Government Act came into force. At the same time Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill and East Grinstead were transferred from East Sussex to form a new 'Mid Sussex'.

Today, just over 700,000 people reside in West Sussex alone, contributing to the total 1.5m people who live in West, Mid and East Sussex as a whole.

District of Adur

Adur is a local government district of West Sussex. It is named after the River Adur (below) and is historically part of the English county of Sussex. The council offices are based in Shoreham-by-Sea and the district has a population of nearly 60,000.

The District was created on April 1st, 1974 by the merger of Southwick and Shoreham urban districts and the civil parishes of Coombes, Lancing and Sompting from Worthing Rural District.

The five main towns and villages in Adur form a strip of settlements on the south coast, between Worthing and Brighton and Hove collectively known as the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation.

Borough of Worthing

Worthing, the beautiful seaside resort is situated between the South Downs and the English Channel, aproximately 11 miles from it's neighbouring city Brighton. Worthing has a population of almost 100,000 residents, and many of these live in the once small villages dotted around the main town itself, that have since become part of (and form) the borough of Worthing.

In 1890 the town received its Royal Charter and became the borough of Worthing, and from then until 1933 it expanded into local villages.

The villages that form the borough are (including year formed):

1890: West Worthing and Heene

1902: (West) Tarring, Offington, Broadwater

1929: Durrington, Goring-by-Sea

1933: West Sompting, Findon Valley, High Salvington

The town is often referred to as 'Sunny Worthing' which came about from a highly popular advertising campaign way back in the 1890s promoting the town's “agreeable climate between the sea and the Downs”.