The history portal for Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex, England
Identifying the location of this building advertised in 1826 prompted a look at the old Ordnance Survey maps to find where the five mile stone was (five miles from Brighton) on the Brighton Road. Turns out to have been the Surrey Arms – originally known as Eastern House a later advertisement shows it to have had eight bedrooms!
Photos showing three phases in the life of the barn that once stood on what is now Coronation Green.
Below – as a workshop for John Wallace Brooker, signwriter – he also played in goal for Shoreham FC in the early 1900’s
Centre – Gutted by fire 1911
Top – Repaired and remodelled for use as a garage 1920’s
Interesting extract on e-bay from the 1908 deeds of Sea View owned by the Maple family. They sold their fish and oysters from their shop at the west end of the High Street – more here http://www.shorehambysea.com/a-fishermans-tale-the-maple-family/
Detailed plans like this of Sea View and surrounding bungalows are invaluable for confirming location and names at a specific time, particularly as the names were often changed. Inset is Louisa Maple, who signed the document, matriarch of the family at the time – husband Samuel had died just a few years earlier.
Found a photo I took of the courtyard at our previous house in Church Street that reminded me of the Winton family next door in the years when the courtyard was shared by both neighbours. Had a quick look through the Winton photos and realised that by putting their courtyard photos together the courtyard as it was in 1900 could virtually be recreated.
Left to right are Pansy Winton, Myrtle Winton, Reg Eley, Stan Winton, Billy Reading and Bobby Hall. The Wintons were a large, happy family of eleven and you can just imagine the laughter and occasional squabbles between brothers and sisters at the family gatherings that took place there (articles on the Winton family are at http://www.shorehambysea.com/william-edward-winton/ and http://www.shorehambysea.com/stanley-howard-winton-1881-1964/
I’m sure we discussed this painting some years ago on the old web site without coming to any real conclusion as to its exact location. Assuming the content is not artistic licence then the view almost fits the history we have of one part of the Shoreham river front area. The windmill could be the one that stood on Mill Green at Ropetackle and behind it rising ground in the distance that may be Mill Hill; the town to the right and the timber work in the foreground is perhaps where the flood arch is now.
There are two question marks of this though.
The Norfolk Suspension Bridge had been well and truly built by the time the artist painted it and (if it is this area) should have featured as the centre piece of the painting so why has he masked the bridge with the boats’ sails?
The Ropetackle mill (we know it was a post mill and the painting confirms this) and the land it was on was sold in 1790 to Daniel Roberts who built a large granary on it. This had burned down by the 1820’s but could it be that the windmill was at a distance from the granary and still standing at the time of the painting – it certainly looks dilapidated with only two sails?
(Fisherfolk on a Tidal Estuary, Shoreham by James Webb 1825 – 1895)
Bungalow Town properties were known by name, not the street numbering system used across the river in Shoreham Town and it was first necessary to identify the location and names of the bungalows at Widewater beach. This has been carried out using photographs, Ordnance Survey maps of the period, Street Directories and the 1911 Census Returns – all have inexactitudes to a greater or lesser extent. Furthermore, the majority of these bungalows were lost to storms and it wasn’t just one storm that caused the bungalows to be
Continue reading “Widewater Bungalows”
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.