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Seaford is a coastal town in the county of East Sussex, on the south coast of England.〔OS Explorer map Eastbourne and Beachy Head Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton B2 edition. Publishing Date:2009. ISBN 978 0319240823〕 Lying east of Newhaven and Brighton and west of Eastbourne, it is the largest town in Lewes district, with a population of about 27,000. In the Middle Ages, Seaford was one of the main ports serving Southern England, but the town's fortunes declined due to coastal sedimentation silting up its harbour and persistent raids by French pirates. The coastal confederation of Cinque Ports during its mediaeval period consisted of a confederation of 42 towns and villages in all. This included Seaford under the 'Limb' of Hastings.〔http://www.villagenet.co.uk/history/1155-cinqueports.php〕 Between 1350 and 1550, the French burned down the town several times. In the 16th century the people of Seaford were known as the "cormorants" or "shags" because of their enthusiasm for looting ships wrecked in the bay. Local legend has it that Seaford residents would, on occasion, cause ships to run aground by placing fake harbour lights on the cliffs.〔(Lewes District Council website: History of Seaford )〕〔Village Net :(Seaford )〕 ''"The wily locals exploited their rights to flotsam and jetsam to the full, even to the extent of luring ships onto the beach by lighting fires. Scores of vessels fell prey to the wreckers of Seaford shags. Grounded in the bay they were stripped of their cargos"'' - Lewes DC local history of Seaford However, Seaford's fortunes revived in the 19th century with the arrival of the railway connecting the town to Lewes and London. It became a small seaside resort town, and more recently a dormitory town for the nearby larger settlements of Eastbourne and Brighton, as well as for London. The traditional Sussex pronunciation of the name has a full vowel in each syllable: "sea-ford". However, outside Sussex (and increasingly within), it is commonly pronounced with a reduced vowel on the second syllable: "seaf'ed". ==Geography== The town lies on the coast near Seaford Head, roughly equidistant between the mouths of the River Ouse and the Cuckmere. The Ouse valley was a wide tidal estuary with its mouth nearly closed by a shingle bar, but the tidal mudflats and salt marshes have been "inned" (protected from the tidal river by dykes) to form grassy freshwater marshes (grazing marsh). To the north the town faces the chalk downland of the South Downs, and along the coast to the east are the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs, and Beachy Head. This stretch of coast is notified for its geological and ecological features as Seaford to Beachy Head Site of Special Scientific Interest. The River Ouse used to run parallel to the shore behind the shingle bar, entering the sea close to Seaford. However, a major storm in the 16th century broke through the bar at its western end, creating a new river mouth close to the village then called Meeching but renamed Newhaven. Part of the former channel of the river remains as a brackish lagoon. The town formerly had excellent beaches, which were supplied by longshore drift constantly moving sand along the coast from west to east. However, in the early 20th century a large breakwater was constructed at Newhaven Harbour and the harbour entrance was regularly dredged. These works cut off the supply of fresh sand to the beach. By the 1980s the beach at Seaford had all but vanished, the shoreline becoming steep, narrow and largely composed of small boulders. This made Seaford attractive to watersports enthusiasts (since water visibility was good and there was a rapid drop-off into deep water) but it discouraged more general seaside visitors. So in 1987 a massive beach replenishment operation was carried out, in which around 1 million tonnes of material was dredged from sandbanks out to sea and deposited on the shore. During a severe storm in October of the same year a substantial amount of the deposited material on the upper part of the beach was washed out past low tide level, leading to questions in the House of Commons. The beach has been topped up several times since then, giving the town a broad beach of sand and shingle.〔(Sand management )〕〔(Sand management )〕 The town's publicity website〔()〕 states: For many, the main attraction in Seaford is the beach. This has an obvious attraction in the summer, when the sea reaches temperatures up to 20° Celsius (68 °F). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Seaford, East Sussex」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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