Brighton B and Brighton A: Photo from Syd Bunker Facebook.
The construction on the first Shoreham power station located in Southwick commenced in in 1902 and the new station named Southwick opened in 1906. There were three M.V. turbo-alternators, each 1.8 MW running at 1500 r.p.m., 8 kV, 50 Hz with a 1 hour overload capacity cf 33% . The new station was connected by five 8 kV cables to the old North Road site where there were two 1500 kW rotary converters (the largest to that time) and four 500 kW motor generators. These replaced some of the earlier generators – the last of which was removed in 1908. Its site chosen because of its position on the harbour, meaning plentiful supply of water for cooling, and access to coal via the shipping route from NE England. The generating capacity of 5,470 kW. Pulverised coal boilers were installed in 1929 with similar steam conditions to the older one. The burners were located at the corners of the furnace. They were dogged with problems until an explosion in the P.F. bunker sealed the fate of the “Bin and Feeder” arrangement used.
The station was given numerous modifications and extensions, and by 1946 it had a increased capacity. Rapidly changing loads and wide range of fuels used made it impossible for the boilers to keep to steam temperature variations, leading to certain failures. The design was abandoned by the British power supply industry in the 1950s as it could not be used for the larger sizes required. By 1961 the station had an installed capacity of 190 MW. Seawater was used for condensing and cooling.
Long time Shoreham resident Bill Gebbett kindly allowed us to record some of his reminiscences from a diverse life in Sussex ranging from his exploits on the farm at Holmbush, driving tractors at 12 years old, becoming a bee expert, amateur film-making, and earning his living as a roofing contractor. Recorded in interview with Mike Riddiford in 2022. The recording is around 47 minutes.
Bill Gebbett the master of bees, in Southwick age 20
Friday 13th March 1964: A light aircraft recently departed from Shoreham Airport crashed into a tree and the front garden of a house, 77 Buckingham Road, Shoreham. Both occupants of the Tiger Moth aircraft died either at the scene or en route to nearby Southlands Hospital. The deceased were pilot, Colin Barrett (23) of Hove and passenger Harold Ginn (33) of Brighton.
An excellent photograph has arrived from Colin Wadey who has kindly permitted us to re-publish it here. This is Middle Road Secondary Boys School in 1946, around 10 years after the school was built. Colin has listed his classmates – with quite a few familiar Shoreham names in the roll.
Joined Neil De Ville at the auctioning of these eight old photos and managed to purchase them.
Pencilled notes on the reverse of some indicate they were photos of Catty Norman and his family who’s bungalow was destroyed by the 1913 storm. No bungalow names were shown but we were able to identify them by by a painstaking trawling through this website’s collections comparing them with similar photos. We thought it might be interesting enough to include an explanation of the identification process and this follows after the eight photos.
1622 Shoreham to Lancing Marshes Map – Although lacking in some detail and is incomplete (the original has the extreme west part missing) this is probably one of the earliest large scale maps of the area. Surveyed and drawn by George Randoll , presumably for the then owners of the land, it came into the hands of the Petworth Estate in 1784 when they purchased Pad Farm and some of the marshes. It shows the main course of the river around Old and New Shoreham. Unusually orientated north to south it covers the area from Well Dyke (near today’s Sussex Pad site) to the ‘Stoane Beatche’ (which shows the build up of the Shoreham Beach spit or peninsula – this is thought to have been long established and even by the 17th century the river is believed to have entered the sea as far west as Southwick). From east to west the map originally covered from Shoreham to Worthing Gate (map piece missing – now known as Teville Gate). Text in the top left corner refers to the submerged village of Pende reads ‘In this place being distant from the shore in the sea (axer?) could wales (rocks) to be (seen?) at low water which are commonly called axaparte – the old name for Pende. A ferry is shown at Old Shoreham where the toll bridge is now – the Lancing and Well Dyke ‘shoppes’ were, of course , workshops. Were these offshoots of the river man made for drainage or naturally formed? Apart from the main river little or nothing of them in their original position remains now although the section from ‘Salte Mershes’ opposite Old Shoreham down to ‘Lyttel Iland’ seems to have survived up to 1780 alongside a road through what is now the airport (Map5a) and although that road can still be seen on the 1912 map (Map12b) the ditch itself has disappeared.
Compiled by Roger Bateman with the added reminiscences of Gerald (Gerry) White.
Advertisements from some of the town’s shops and businesses ranging from the early 1900’s to the 1950’s. Largely a pictorial record including brief information where known to which has been added extracts from the recollections of Gerry Impey. Gerry has become a much valued contributor to the Shorehambysea.com history forums with his knowledge of the town over many years from the 1930’s onwards.
Shorehambysea.com is a free to use community web site covering all aspects of Shoreham’s history. Originally created in 2004 it was re-launched using a WordPress platform that provides a more stable, popular and user friendly base upon which to build our large archive of historical information.
We have over over 6000 photographs, around 400 historical articles, and a large range of research materials, census and directory lists in one history site. We have the ambition to create options for comment, discussion and contribution of more material related to the history of Shoreham-by-Sea in Sussex.
We have re-opened the original Shoreham Forum that ran from 2004 to 2016 and have added a blog section. There is a subscribe option at the bottom of all pages, so you can be notified when new content is added to the site.
