Worthing / United Kingdom

Worthing is a seaside town and district with borough status in West Sussex, England. It is situated at the foot of the South Downs, 10 miles west of Brighton, and 18 miles east of Chichester. With an estimated population of about 110,000 and an area of 12.5 square miles , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation, which makes it part of 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 April 2019, the Art Deco Worthing Pier was named the best in Britain.The area around Worthing has been populated for at least 6,000 years and contains Britain's greatest concentration of Stone Age flint mines, which are some of the earliest mines in Europe. Lying within the borough, the Iron Age hill fort of Cissbury Ring is one of Britain's largest. Worthing means " Worth/Worō's people", from the Old English personal name Worth/Worō , and -ingas "people of" . The recorded history of Worthing began with the Domesday Book. It is historically part of Sussex in the rape of Bramber, although Goring, which forms part of the rape of Arundel, was incorporated in 1929. For many centuries Worthing was a small mackerel fishing hamlet until in the late 18th century it developed into an elegant Georgian seaside resort and attracted the well-known and wealthy of the day. In the 19th and 20th centuries the area was one of Britain's chief market gardening centres.Modern Worthing has a large service industry, particularly in financial services. It has three theatres and one of Britain's oldest cinemas, the Dome cinema. Writers Oscar Wilde and Harold Pinter lived and worked in the town.