Woodingdean’s history was largely related to farming, and a few buildings remain. The former workhouse school was in Warren Road, and the site is now the private Nuffield hospital, which contains the capped site of the deepest hand-dug well in the world, itself more than 150 years old. Woodingdean takes its name from a former farm at the southern end of the modern suburb, once owned by the comedian Max Miller.
Woodingdean grew up after the First World War and consisted of plots of land which had formerly been used for sheep-farming on the South Downs. The area was gradually developed between the1920s and 1960s with private estates in the middle and council housing round the edge backing on to the Downs. Today the area has a population of more than 10,000.