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Interesting Facts About Worthing

Introduction

Worthing is a seaside resort town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, 11.4 miles (18 km) west of Brighton, and 18 miles (29 km) east of Chichester. With a population of 113,094 and an area of 12.5 square miles (32.4 km2), the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Hove built-up area, the 15th most populous urban area in the United Kingdom. Since 2010, northern parts of the borough, including the Worthing Downland Estate, have formed part of the South Downs National Park. In 2019, the Art Deco Worthing Pier was dubbed the best in Britain.

History of Worthing

From around 4000 BC, the South Downs above Worthing was Britain’s earliest and largest flint-mining area, with four of the UK’s 14 known flint mines lying within 7 miles (11 km) of the centre of Worthing. An excavation at Little High Street dates the earliest remains from Worthing town centre to the Bronze Age. There is also an important Bronze Age hill fort on the western fringes of the modern borough at Highdown Hill.

During the Iron Age, one of Britain’s largest hill forts was built at Cissbury Ring. The area was part of the civitas of the Regni during the Romano-British period. Several of the borough’s roads date from this era and lie in a grid layout known as ‘centuriation’. A Romano-British farmstead once stood in the centre of the town, at a site close to Worthing Town Hall. In the 5th and 6th centuries, the area became part of the kingdom of Sussex. The place names of the area, including the name Worthing itself, date from this period.

General Info

The earliest known appearance of the name is Wyrtingas circa AD 960. It was listed as Ordinges or Wordinges in the Domesday Book and subsequently known as Wuroininege, Wurdingg, Wording or Wurthing, Worthinges, Wyrthyng, Worthen and Weorðingas. The modern name was first documented in AD 1297.

The root itself is uncertain. Wyrt is the Old English word for “plant,” “vegetable,” “herb” or “spice,” though there is no obvious nexus with the name of the town. Moreover, the “y” was a front-loaded vowel that was indistinguishable from “i” by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period and the spelling never evolved in that direction. The more obvious Middle English worth is not likely as well, as there was a dramatic Norman language influence on the spelling at the time of the Domesday Book. A more probable root is the word for an Anglo-Saxon goddess – Wyrd – with a shift of the alveolar consonant d to t as evidenced by the eleventh century evolution of the word.