It is located at the northern end of the River Adur gap in the South Downs, four miles (6.4 km) north of Shoreham-by-Sea and has a land area of 1,877 hectares (4,640 acres).

The site is a bridging point over the river: on the opposite bank are Bramber and Steyning, making the whole area somewhat built-up.

For this reason the prefix Upper is still ignored by many local people today, who refer to their community by the original (and current ecclesiastical) title of Beeding.

It includes a number of different soil types from Chalk downland, rich Lower Greensand to sticky Gault Clay.

There are bluebells, goldilocks buttercup, anemones and early purple orchids and the woodland canopy hosts a noisy rookery.

There was a cricket ground in the Prince Regent's time on the southern side of the Monarch's Way (TQ 210 095) as it tracks east from the Beeding Hill car park.

There is a track from Castle Town, Upper Beeding called The Bostal which now forms part of the long distance Monarchs Way.

The track passes the Beeding Hill Combe disused quarry/chalkpit (TQ 212 100) which has created a beautiful mosaic of species-rich scrub, short and long grass and bare ground (at the quarry).

[7] Between the two tracks, north of the Beeding Hill car park, is Reservoir Corner, or Lynchet Triangle (TQ 207 098), which marks the ‘cultivation terraces’ attempts by medieval peasants to win further arable strips from increasingly unsuited ground, The whole of the valley floor between here and Castle Town, as well as Windmill Hill, was organised in the medieval strip cultivated open fields until the middle of the 19th century.

Anchor Bottom (TQ 205 092) runs down from the south of Beeding Hill carpark to the Dacre Gardens and River Adur.

In summer the slopes are colourful with scabious, knapweed, red clover, betony, Sussex rampion, Restharrow, pyramidal orchid, eggs and bacon, viper's bugloss and ox-eye daisy.

Situated within the Beeding Chalk Pit, production at Shoreham Cement Works began more than 135 years ago in 1883.

It was a major employer for the local area, providing hundreds of jobs to the residents of Shoreham and Upper Beeding until in 1991 the site shut its doors for the last time.

Later, in 1260, the Lord of Perching got a licence to build a fortified manor house down under the Hill, and you can still see crop marks where it used to stand.

[7] There was a scatter of Bronze Age round barrows along this scarp top, but only one is now in good condition — on the South Downs Way just east of the cross roads in the dip between Truleigh and Edburton Hills.

The south side of scout field still holds archaic meadow herbage, and in May there are still orchids, quaking grass, bugle, adders tongue fern, glaucous sedge, agrimony and knapweed with burnet companion moth, small heath and small copper butterflies flitting around them.

They are rich in wildlife with as many as twenty three ancient woodland plants being counted here, including that classic of the Gault: thin spiked wood sedge.

In spring they are full of warblers and bats including Noctule, Serotine, Brown Long Eared and Pipistrelle species and in the past cuckoo and nightingale were a common sound.

[6] Local people have created a managed fragment of coppice wood, next to the industrial estate, which the public can freely walk and enjoy.

Some years there are fly orchids with the nettle-leaved bellflower, primrose and bluebell which grow underneath the large old beeches and wych elm.

The steep east end of the valley is derelict chalk grassland invaded by tor grass but does retain lots of rockrose and an associated webcap fungus, and the little black earth tongue.

It was intensively farmed and cultivated for decades, though the east and west slopes of Bushy Bottom retained threadbare relics of their old heathy pastures.

There are small heath and common blue butterflies and the big herds of cattle attract the rare hornet robberfly, our largest and handsomest fly.

It has a slightly less chalky soil chemistry, and has lesser stitchwort, sorrel, and gorse as well as more chalk-loving restharrow, quaking grass, bladder campion and thyme.

The east slope (TQ 233 101) is small and has five orchid species, lots of colourful wild flowers and butterflies, interesting fungi and bushy bits for the birds.

[7] This site lies just north of the spot where Summersdeane farmstead stood until the Canadian artillery flattened it during the Second World War.

Upper Summersdeane's east slope (TQ 234 101) has the rare bastard toadflax, carline thistle and horseshoe vetch.

Lurid Bolete is present, attracted by the rockrose which it mutually depends upon, and there is mosaic puffball, persistent waxcap and little bluey-black pinkgills.

is rather scruffy, gorsey slope has lots of red-purple betony, yellow rattle, rampion, ragwort, red clover and hairy violet.

The neighbouring Freshcombe/Thundersbarrow slopes to the west are in the Southwick parish (TQ 230 092) but are a very special remote place with much wildlife and summer flowers.