The large shed(s) or small building(s) marked on the 1931 OS map as ‘Rocket Apparatus’ and with a red dot on the photo, apparently also contained other lifesaving equipment such as lines, breeches-buoys etc., Following the coast from Lancing to Seaford on maps for the same year and earlier faithfully record other coastguard cottages as well as Shoreham’s but don’t seem to show any further references to rocket apparatuses. Why is Shoreham’s the only one to be shown – weren’t there any others at that time? From a practical point of view why weren’t they stored closer to the sea?

These images tend to support the view that it did:- Gough’s 1360 map, drawn when St Mary’s was just two hundred or so years old, and detail from the panel of a 17^th century chimney piece in Marlipins Museum (photo Giles Standing). The carving was believed by some to be ‘an inexact but legitimate representation of St Mary’s Church with its nave intact (and spire)’ (Salmon 1903: 237) but many dispute this, quoting a lack of of any evidence of a spire at all in the known records and that the carving was simply a stylised representation of a church in the early 17^th century. The same argument is put in the case of the 1360 map.

 

Hadfield’s advert featuring early 1900’s Old Shoreham farmer William Norman and his massive mangolds! In 1910 another Shoreham character that featured in an advert was Myrtle Winton who’s husband Reg Eley ran a motor cycle business in Shoreham. This over-pasted and grubby insertion from the ‘Motor Cycle’ magazine in the family scrap book is nevertheless an interesting relic perhaps.

 

 

 

Sadly the tragedy concerning the Canadian soldiers discussed in previous posts was not an isolated incident.  We know of the drownings of some individuals over past two centuries or so from newspaper reports of the time but there was another multiple drowning accident in June of 1858.  A group of Lancing College boys were bathing at Applesham Creek, we know it now as Cuckoo Creek, and were overcome by the strong current. Two managed to make it to the river bank but the other three were lost to the river and only two of the bodies were later recovered.

Kingston near the harbour mouth has come up with some interesting artifacts in the fairly recent past. This old cannon (little known about it though – perhaps Nobby English who is credited with the photo may know?) and this effigy of a mediaeval knight that was revealed in the 1950’s following erosion of a chalk layer/bank  – an important discovery I would have thought but what happened to that?