Just behind the trees can be seen North End House- Burne Jones's old house, whilst to the right, just outside the picture are the Kipling Gardens.

Kipling Gardens: These gardens are opposite North End House, and were formerly the walled gardens associated with Rudyard Kipling's house on the Green. They form a quiet haven for rest and solitude. On a warm Summer's evening  when the swallows are flying at speed and just cutting the daisy tops the sound of croquet mallets on wood is the only sound to be heard apart from the chattering of the bird life in the trees.

High Street: Now we have stepped off the Village Green and are looking South down the high street. On the right is Old Place and some 300 metres away is the sea.

Old Place: Take away some of the trimmings and you will find three early nineteenth century cottages. These were subsequently merged to form the Old Place Hotel. Taking guests obviously didn't pay for the building is now being used as a residents club and renamed The Rottingdean Club.

Hampton Cottage: This is one of the many 18th century cottages in the high street. 

Mill Cottage: To the south of Hampton cottage stands a dirty white cobbled building known as mill cottage. Built sometime in the 18th century it was at one time owned by the Mr Nicholls, who owned the old post mill at the top of Baze Hill road. 

Margo's Mews: Next to Mill Cottage lies Margo's Mews- formerly known as Bunker's Row. The building which you see here was originally a large barn (Bunger's Barn) and was transformed in 1788 into six cottages for the use of the poor of the parish. This row of buildings remained for the use of poor until 1921 when they were sold off and converted into the "Sally Lunn" Tearooms. In 1985-86 the row was re-converted to residential accommodation in the form of three more spacious houses.  

Black Horse Inn: The Inn is one of the oldest buildings in Rottingdean and dates from 1532. It has a timber or "frame" construction that has mostly been plastered over. Formerly called the Black Hole it was undoubtedly a haunt of smugglers in days gone by.  The present lounge used to be a blacksmith's forge.

St. Aubyn's School: The building dates back to Georgian times and first took on the role of being a school in the 1820's when it was used as an overflow building for Dr Hooker's school at the Grange. In those days it was known as Field House. It passed through various hands before being refounded as St Aubyns School in 1895. The school is considered to one of The South's leading Preparatory Schools for boys and girls aged 4 to 13 

The Trellis Restaurant: This was originally two cottages built in 1680. Built of thick cobble and flint knapped walls the building is warm in Winter and cool in Summer. Take a break here and rest your weary feet. If you are sitting outside look up and you should be able to see  the old Fire Insurance badge - which all old properties used to have. If the cottages had caught fire a team of fire fighters from the insuring company would come to the rescue. Heaven help the owners if the fire fighting team came from another insurance company - in such instances the rival fire fighting team has been known to go away again without fighting the fire!

Tallboys: On the other side of the road from the Trellis Restaurant stands a narrow building known as Tallboys. It was built in 1780 as a customs house and acted as the local head quarters for the revenue service trying to combat the considerable amount of smuggling taking place along this coast. In 1788, for example, revenue officers recovered in Rottingdean 71 bags of tobacco and 185 gallon flasks of spirits. 

The Queen Victoria: The original Queen Victoria public house ( also known as the Hole in the Wall) was situated on what is now the West Street car park. When the car park was built in the 1930's and a number of properties had to be demolished, including the Queen Vic, the present pub  was built almost immediately opposite it's original site, where formerly some cobble and knapped flint cottages stood. The picture shows us looking north along the High Street.

The White Horse Inn: The Inn has a long history. The Inn was a regular halt for travellers along the Dover road. In the mid- 18th century, the Inn (then called the King of Prussia), was a famous venue for bull-baiting, and cock fighting as well as being a haunt for smugglers. Here the wreckage of ships driven onto the unfriendly shore was auctioned. Some of the ships were no doubt lured here by the wreckers who were at one stage active along this coast. 

The old Inn was destroyed in the 1930's and the present hotel was built soon afterwards.

Volk's railway : All that remains of Magnus Volk's railway through the sea are the concrete blocks which supported the iron rails. The picture was taken amongst the rocks near to the hotel and looks east towards Rottingdean and Saltdean in the distance.

Volk's railway: Some of those concrete blocks that used to support Volk's railway carriage. The picture looks west with the marina and Blackrock in the distance. You might also just be able to make out the remains of a wooden pole. The stumps of these poles are all that rermains of the overhead power transmission line that used to deliver electricity to the railway carriage.

Cliffs and beach at Rottingdean The white cliffs were formed some 70 - 90 million years old in the Upper Cretaceous period.and were laid down in warm shallow waters by a host of planktonic like creatures. Chalk is composed of the skeletal remains of the bodies of minute marine animals and life must have been teeming in those days for the thickness of the chalk layer is approximately 200 m. Interspersed amongst the the chalk are bands of flint nodules. Flint originated from the decomposition of sponges and other sea plants on the bottom of the ancient ocean, creating deposits of Silica from their remains. The process isn't fully understood, but essentially involved the accumulation of the silica in nodules, or sometimes bands, within the chalk, and undergoing solidification, probably over a considerable time and under considerable pressure. In some circumstances the silica may have dissolved again and been re deposited within the chalk. In the picture you can just make out the horizontal bedding of the chalk and the horizontal bedding of the flint nodules. The beach is mostly made up of those flint nodules which have been stripped from the chalk cliffs and then rounded by sea action. Flint often replaces the minerals of sea urchin fossils so don't be surprised if you come across some of these as you walk the beach. In the far distance you can just make out Brighton marina and the City of Brighton & Hove in the very far distance.

And so back to the Windmill: The windmill dominates the cliffs and no pictorial history would be complete without the telling of the tallest story in cricket. Before the present windmill was built the ground on the top of Beacon Hill was used as a cricket pitch. In 1758, whilst playing cricket there a batsman hit the ball so hard that it rolled down the hill into the village. A fielder was sent to chase it and threw the ball so hard that it missed the stumps and rolled down the other side of the hill. There were no boundaries in those days and the batsmen ran all of 67 runs - a record that has never been bettered before or since.

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