Horsham (/ˈhɔːrʃəm/) is a market town on the upper reaches of the River Arun on the fringe of the Weald in West Sussex, England.

Jeremy Quin had served as Conservative Member of Parliament for Horsham since 2015, succeeding Francis Maude, who held the seat from 1997 but retired at the 2015 general election.

[4] By the eighteenth century the borough corporation had ceased to have much role in administering the town, instead serving primarily as the means by which the main landowners, the Dukes of Norfolk, controlled the election of MPs.

Dealing with such rotten boroughs was part of the motivation behind the Reform Act 1832, which reduced Horsham's representation from two to one MPs and made elections less open to abuse.

[12] The River Arun rising from ghylls in the St Leonard's Forest area, to the east of Horsham, cuts through the south of the town then makes its way through Broadbridge Heath.

A short walk along the banks of the Arun in a south-easterly direction is Chesworth Farm, an area of open public access.

Horsham has developed beyond the original boundaries to incorporate some of the smaller hamlets which now form part of the outer districts.

[17] South-west of the town, the Needles estate was laid out from c. 1955, with a mixture of privately owned and council-built houses and bungalows.

[18] Roffey is north east of the centre of Horsham and as a hamlet dates back to at least the 13th century, with taxation records of 1296 showing 18 liable people in the area.

Horsham's town centre has a reputation for small business[25] and also provides multiple retail chain stores.

Supermarkets serving the town include branches of Tesco, Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer, Lidl, Aldi and Waitrose.

West Sussex County Council has partially occupied parkside after Royal Sun Alliance vacated the building.

[29] Until 2015 the Swiss-based multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis, formerly Ciba-Geigy before a 1996 merger, was a major employer in the town, but the plant is now closed and the site scheduled for redevelopment.

The ground floor was still used as an occasional market place until the Town Hall was closed to be let as Bill’s, a restaurant chain in the UK.

[36][37] At the west end of the town centre formerly stood a kinetic water sculpture called the 'Rising Universe', colloquially known as 'The Shelley Fountain'.

It was designed by Angela Conner, and erected to commemorate the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who was born at Field Place in Broadbridge Heath, near Warnham, two miles west from Horsham centre.

Bus services are provided by Metrobus, Stagecoach South, and Compass Travel to destinations such as Brighton, Crawley, Gatwick Airport, Dorking, Guildford, Worthing, Pulborough, Burgess Hill, Storrington and Haywards Heath.

The railway station is run by Southern, and is on the Arun Valley Line from Chichester to Crawley, Gatwick Airport and London Victoria.

Trains on this line start from Bognor Regis and Portsmouth & Southsea or Southampton Central and divide or attach at Horsham.

Cyclists, pedestrians, and horseriders can reach Guildford and Shoreham via the Downs Link, a long-distance bridleway and cycle route which follows the now disused Horsham-Guildford, and Horsham-Shoreham railway lines[45] and passes through Southwater, just to the south of Horsham.

[46] Horsham is home to the following well known independent schools: Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC South and ITV Meridian.

Founded in 1921, Horsham Trinity Cricket Club play at the Victory Road recreation ground (Trafalgar).

[53] Horsham YMCA F.C., founded in 1898, currently play in the Premier Division of the Southern Combination Football League in 2024–25.

Initially, the team played on farmland adjacent to the Warnham Park Estate, but from 1930 until 1968, they were settled at Horsham Cricket Club.

At the end of the 2018–19 season, Horsham 1st XV was promoted to London 1 South, the highest level the club has ever achieved.

[57] The Registry of births, deaths, and marriages is located in Park House, North Street in central Horsham.

At the eastern side is The Pavilions in the Park leisure centre with a gym and a 25m swimming pool run by a private company for Horsham District Council.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had the fictitious Openshaw family, in the Sherlock Holmes story The Five Orange Pips, residing in the town.

The programme mentioned that: In 2007, a Reader's Digest poll put Horsham as the 25th best place in mainland Britain to bring up a family.

It also has the honour of being presented with the Royal Horticultural Society's Bloomin' Wild award, which reflected the theme for year's national judging.