Editing Shoreham-by-Sea (section)

===Southwick Hill===
[[File:A27 Southwick Hill Tunnels - geograph.org.uk - 1053864.jpg|thumb|left|A27 Southwick Hill Tunnels]]
Southwick Hill ({{gbmappingsmall|TQ 237 077}}) is owned by the [[National Trust]] and has some special wildlife areas. In 1985, local residents were presented with the plan for the [[A27 road]] bypass cutting through the Hill. Through the vigorous campaigning of activists from ABBA (the Anti-Brighton Bypass Association) the road was re-routed through a [[Southwick Hill Tunnel|tunnel under the Hill]] rather than a cutting through it.<ref>{{cite web |title=Southwick Hill Tunnel |url=https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Southwick_Hill_Tunnel |website=Sabre |publisher=Reader's Digest |access-date=September 19, 2024}}</ref>

In high summer, on the hill ('bostal') path, there is [[round-headed rampion]], blue [[scabious]], and [[autumn gentian]]. On the south side of the bridlepath, there is an un-grazed triangle with a taller sward. Here, there are still rabbits playing on the lawns amongst the [[Linum catharticum|purging flax]], [[Lotus corniculatus|eggs and bacon]], [[squinancywort]], [[eyebright]], and [[wild thyme]], which themselves mingle with tall herb patches of [[parsnip]], [[greater knapweed]], [[ragwort]], [[hogweed]], and [[St John's wort]]. There are bushes of [[raspberry]] and [[Chamerion angustifolium|rose-bay willowherb]]. Butterflies in the area include [[common blue]], [[clouded yellow]], [[Small heath (butterfly)|small heath]], [[Polygonia c-album|comma]], [[Vanessa atalanta|red admiral]], [[painted lady]], and day-flying moths like [[treble-bar]] and [[Dusky Sallow|dusky sallow]]. There are [[glowworm]]s too. In autumn, parts of the short turf may be colourful from the many [[waxcap]] and other old meadow fungi. Additional mushrooms include [[puffball]]s, [[Lepista saeva|blue legs]], and [[Flammulina velutipes|velvet shank]]; [[fairy ring]]s also form.<ref name=":0" /><sup>:211</sup>

However, Southwick Hill is not what it was. Until recent years, it was the best place on the Brighton Downs to get a sense of what Down pasture was like during late Victorian and Edwardian times through to 1940. The tenant farmer continuously grazed the whole Hill and, as a result, it was something of a time capsule from a particular period of Downland history, that of the long agricultural depression from 1876 to 1940, when scrub took over many old pastures and cattle replaced many sheep flocks.<ref name=":0"/><sup>:210</sup> In recent years, however, the Hill has been split by fencing into a southern half which is seriously under-grazed, with simplified tussocky grassland, and a northern half which remains better grazed. The southern half has now lost its close-bitten down pasture, with its flowerings of tiny herbs and fruitings of old pasture fungi. Nevertheless, as a whole the Hill still has a mixture of archaic pasture and scrub thickets, sometimes mature enough to harbour small maiden oaks, and it retains much of the wildlife lost elsewhere on the Brighton Downs.