Few people standing on top of windswept Devil's Dyke today would ever imagine it was once the South's premier tourist attraction, a 19th Century Alton Towers.

More than 30,000 people are reported to have visited the remote hilltop on a single bank holiday in 1897 to sample the exotic delights, cable cars, fortune tellers and the fresh breezes 700ft above sea level.

At the time, it was described as "a mount of temptation with vulgarities that profane the spot" by one unimpressed commentator.

The cable cars and railway line have since disappeared, the exhibitions of oddities have crumbled to dust and the thronging crowds long since vanished and the site has been taken on by the National Trust.

But now, the lost history of the site, and dozens of other forgotten pleasure gardens, has been brought back to life in a new book published by retired police officer Mark Dudeney and his cousin Eileen Hallett.

The cousins, whose grandfather Edwin Street opened Burgess Hill's Victoria Pleasure Gardens in 1897, have spent the past year digging up long-lost photographs and anecdotes to paint a picture of how our ancestors spent their leisure time.

Mr Dudeney, 65, who lives in Burgess Hill, said: "There won't be many people around who remember Devil's Dyke as it was, the whole thing wound down before the Second World War. It's still a very pleasant spot to go for picnics but it's absolutely nothing like it once was."

The book tells the story of how JH Hubbard, a wealthy big game hunter, took over the hotel, installed the cable cars which spanned the Dyke, an early rollercoaster, a camera obscura, helter-skelter and something described as a "bicycle railway".

Constantly on the lookout for different novelties, he once had a whale's skull, which had washed up on Brighton beach, placed on display in front of the hotel.

Mr Dudeney said: "As we were researching the book we realised many people had never even heard of the things we were talking about. It's slipped from living memory which I think is a terrible shame for something which gave so many people so much pleasure."

The book also features Brighton's Promenade Gardens and Shoreham's Swiss Gardens among other lost treasures of the county's Victorian past.

The Pleasure Grounds of Sussex, published by Mid-Sussex Books, is available from bookshops priced £11.50 from Monday.