Category:Rottingdean

1860 map, of Shoreham (left) through Brighton (centre), to Rottingdean (right) [image info]

1939: Rottingdean pool, during the 1930s craze for lidos [image info]

~1961: Undercliff walk, apparently at Rottindean (judged by the buildings) [image info]

The landing stage constructed for the Daddy Long-Legs seagoing railway [image info]

Rottingdean is a smallish village associated with a lowering of the coastal cliffline, allowing access to the water, just to the east of Brighton, past the cliffs at Black Rock.

The name

While the name "Rottingdean" is perhaps a bit of a turnoff (conjuring images of a rotting ecclesiastical corpse in a gibbet), actually, "dean" or "dene" refers to a dry valley (see also Saltdean, the next easy access point to the sea along the coastline), and the beginning of the name is reckoned to relate to some Saxon fellow called Rota, so it's "the valley without a river where Rota lives".

Over the years, the village's name is supposed to have been documented variously as Rotingeden, Ruttingedene, Rottyngden, and Rottendeane. One might have expected the village to have unilaterally changed the spelling of its name at some point to something more genteel-sounding, like "Rotendean" ... but since it probably already receives a decent number of visitors, changing its name to attract more has probably not been a big priority.

1805 description:

Rottingdean
, which is the first village on our route, consists of a long street in a hollow, and has been of late years enlarged by the erection of lodging houses for families, who prefer this sequester'd vale, to the bustling scenes we have just left.
— , John V. Button, , The Brighton and Lewes Guide, , 1805