Newspaper Reports continued 3:-
1809 ‘Extensive docks’ (i.e., sluices) were constructed ‘between Shoreham and Lancing to drain the low lands in that neighbourhood’ and replaced the marshland with meadowland that one hundred years later was to be used for the airport.
John (88) and Elizabeth (87) Boyce were landlord and landlady of the Star Inn (on the corner of Church and High Streets) for over 50 years. They had been married for 60 years and both died in July of 1812 within a week of each other.
The discovery of the oyster bed off Shoreham was reported in 1818 to be seventy by seven-miles in expanse and, if of equal depth was said to be possibly inexhaustible. Another bed three by two miles in area was discovered just to the west of Worthing Point in 1824. A free for all developed and not just from local fishing vessels. Some effort was made to prohibit dredging between May and August each year but this does not seem to have been effective and upwards of fifty million oysters were dredged from the Worthing bed. The price of the shellfish plummeted and even the poor could afford to eat oysters but inevitably the beds were dredged to exhaustion.