Web design in Rottingdean that fits a village with standards.

People have lived around Rottingdean since the Neolithic period, roughly 2500 BC, and there are Bronze Age and Iron Age traces on the hills above it, including an Iron Age burial site uncovered on Beacon Hill in 1863. The village appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Rotingeden, and the name is usually read as the valley of Rota’s people, after the Saxon leader who settled here. It has seen more history than a village this size has any right to. In 1377, during the Hundred Years War, a French raiding party under Jean de Vienne landed nearby, and the Prior of Lewes marched out with around five hundred men, only to be ambushed on the Downs above the village.

From the late 18th century the village drew people who wanted a quieter alternative to Brighton, and by the end of the 19th century that included the painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones and his nephew Rudyard Kipling. Kipling rented The Elms, on The Green, between 1897 and 1902, and the grounds are now the Kipling Gardens. The old vicarage, The Grange, later home to the artist Sir William Nicholson and restored by Lutyens, now houses the village art gallery and museum, run by Rottingdean Heritage. Roedean School and the Blind Veterans UK centre both grew up within the old parish too.

The village became part of the county borough of Brighton in 1928, and in 1996 it got its own parish council back, still the only one in the whole city of Brighton and Hove. Neighbouring Woodingdean was carved out as a separate parish back in 1933, and much of what is now Saltdean was once Rottingdean land as well. The Black Horse on the High Street is reckoned to be the oldest complete building in the village, dating to the reign of Henry VIII. And like most of this coast, Rottingdean has a smuggling past, with contraband landed at Saltdean Gap and moved up over the hill into the village.

None of that sells a website by itself, but it is exactly the kind of detail that tells a customer, and Google, that a business genuinely belongs to Rottingdean rather than parachuting in from the city. We write your site so it reads as local, because it is, and we set up your Google Business Profile so you show up when someone nearby searches for what you do.

Also covering: Saltdean, Ovingdean, Woodingdean, Brighton, Kemptown and the surrounding villages.