The
River Tillingham flows through the
English county of
East Sussex. It meets the
River Brede and the
eastern River Rother near the town of
Rye. A navigable sluice controlled the entrance to the river between 1786 and 1928, when it was replaced by a vertical lifting gate which was not navigable. The river provided water power to operate the bellows of an iron works at
Beckley Furnace, used to make cannons for the
Royal Navy between 1578 and 1770, when it became uneconomic, and a water mill which replaced it, until that burnt down in 1909. The lower reaches supported a thriving shipbuilding industry from the early nineteenth century onwards, and although on a smaller scale, was still doing so in 2000.