Chimney sweep in West Sussex

West Sussex is three different sweeping jobs in one county. On the coast — Selsey, Bognor, Littlehampton, Worthing — you get exposure, salt and short flues on low buildings, where downdraught is as often the wind as it is a blockage. Inland at Arundel, Midhurst and Petworth the stock turns to flint, brick and timber frame, with inglenooks and much-altered period flues. North around Horsham and Billingshurst you are into the Weald proper, with heavy wood-burning and the fuel-seasoning question that always follows.

The county also holds the densest period terracing on our round at Worthing, where several flues share a stack and a century of alterations has left some of them connected to each other. That is where smoke turns up in a room nobody lit a fire in.