Information about Shoreham By Sea

Shoreham-by-Sea
Shoreham-by-Sea (United Kingdom) Shoreham-by-Sea (United Kingdom) Shoreham-by-Sea shown within the United Kingdom
OS grid reference	_region:GB_scale:25000 TQ218049
District	Adur
Shire county	West Sussex
Region
Constituent country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	London
Postcode district	BN43
Dialling code	023 92
Police	Sussex
Fire	West Sussex
Ambulance
UK Parliament	East Worthing and Shoreham
European Parliament	South East England
List of places: UK • England • West Sussex

Coordinates: Shoreham-by-Sea, is a town and civil parish in the Adur District of West Sussex, England.

The town is bordered to its north by the South Downs, to its west by the Adur valley and to its south by the River Adur and Shoreham Beach on the English Channel. The town lies in the middle of the ribbon of urban development along the coast between the city of Brighton & Hove and the town of Worthing.

History

Old Shoreham dates back to pre-Roman times. The name of the town has an Old English origin[1]. The town and port of New Shoreham was established by the Norman conquerors towards the end of the 11th century.

St Mary de Haura Church was built in the decade following 1103 (the Domesday Book was dated 1086), and around this time the town was laid out on a grid pattern that, in essence, survives in the town centre. The Church is only half the size of the original - the former nave has completely fallen down although remnants of the original west facade survive in the Churchyard to some height.

The rise of Brighton, Hove and Worthing - in particular the arrival of the railway in 1840 - prepared the way for Shoreham's rise as a Victorian sea port, with several shipyards and an active coasting trade. Shoreham Harbour remains in commercial operation.

Shoreham Beach, to the south of the town, is a shingle bank thrown up over the centuries by the sea through the process of longshore drift as an extension to Lancing parish in the west. This blocks the southerly flow of the River Adur which turns east at this point to discharge into the English Channel further along the coast at a point that has varied considerably over time. Once the harbour mouth was stabilised it was defended by Shoreham Fort. Converted railway carriages became summer homes around the turn of the century, and Bungalow Town, as it was then known, became home for a short time to the early UK film industry. Shoreham Beach officially became part of Shoreham-by-Sea in 1910. It was cleared for defence reasons during the Second World War and is now almost completely redeveloped for modern houses, although one or two old bungalows still stand today. Nonetheless the Church of the Good Shepherd, built in 1913, still stands. The shingle bank extends further east past the harbour mouth, forming the southern boundary of the commercial harbour in Southwick, Portslade and Hove.

Shoreham civil parish covers an area of 984.88ha and has a population of 19,175 (2001 census).

Landscape & Wildlife

Transversed by the River Adur and with the downs and the sea nearby, the area supports a diverse wildlife flora and fauna. The mudflats support wading birds and gulls, including the Ringed Plover which attempts to breed on the coastal shingle. The Pied Wagtail is common in the town in the winter months. Insect fauna includes dragonflies over the flood plains of the river. The south and west facing downs attract at least 32 species of butterflies including a nationally important population of the Chalkhill Blue Butterfly on Mill Hill[2]. The underlying rock is chalk on the downs, with alluvium in the old river channels. The Adur district is fortunate to have a large variety of habitats in a small area, including natural chalk downs and butterfly meadows, freshwater and reed beds, salt marsh and estuary, brackish water lagoons, woodland, shingle seashore, chalk platform undersea and large expanses of sand.

Farmers' Market

Shoreham-by-Sea is home to the largest Farmers' Market in Sussex and one of the largest in the South of England, it is held in East Street on the second Saturday of each month and usually has in excess of 60 stall holders.

Transport

Shoreham Airport, located in Lancing to the west of the main town, is now in private ownership. It is the oldest licensed airport in the UK, the Art Deco terminal building is listed as of historical interest and has also been used as a set for the filming of one of Agatha Christie's classic Poirot stories, a Crimewatch type reconstruction in 2000 by Meridian television [3]Lord Edgware Dies, as well as the scenes from the film of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.[4]

The town is also served by Shoreham-by-Sea railway station, located on the West Coastway Line.

People

• Writer Brian Behan lived on a boat moored in the town in the late 1960s.
• Mark Benson, former England cricketer and now a cricket umpire, was born in Shoreham-by-Sea on 6 July, 1958.
• Havergal Brian, the English composer, moved from London to Shoreham-by-Sea in 1958 at the age of 82; he wrote twenty symphonies there over the next ten years.
• Raymond O. Faulkner, philologist and compiler of the standard hieroglyphic dictionary used by many modern Egyptologists, was born in Shoreham on 26 December 1894.
• Fiona Mont was dubbed "Britain's most wanted woman" in 2000. It was claimed she was smuggled out of the country in a light aircraft from Shoreham Airport in 1999 (video).http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7528601151226033144&hl=en
• Phyllis Pearsall, painter, writer, and creator of the A to Z map of London lived on Shoreham Beach before her death in 1996.
• Harry Ricardo founded Ricardo Consulting Engineers in Shoreham-by-Sea, where it still has its main offices.
• Captain Henry Roberts (1725 - 1796) was a native of Shoreham, where he raised his six children. He sailed with Captain James Cook on the second and third of the great voyages and acted as cartographer. He witnessed the death of Captain Cook, killed by natives in Hawaii in 1779. Later, whilst in command of HMS Undaunted in the West Indies, he caught yellow fever and died in 1796.
• Chris Frame, British media tycoon, lived in Shoreham through out his childhood.
• Leo Sayer, British singer and recording artist, was born Gerard Hugh Sayer on 21 May 1948 in Shoreham-by-Sea. His parents were Thomas Sayer and Teresa Nolan.*
• Nicholas van Hoogstraten, British property tycoon, was born Nicholas Marcel Hoogstraten in Shoreham-by-Sea in 1946 and was educated at a local Jesuit school.
• Hubert Scott-Paine, (the boss of R. J. Mitchell at Supermarine, who designed the Spitfire), was born on 11 March 1890 in Shoreham and had a yacht in Stowe's Yard, before moving to Southampton.
• Michael Standing, Chesterfield midfielder, was born in Shoreham-by-Sea on 21 March, 1981.
• Nathaniel Woodard, the founder of Lancing College and the Woodard Schools, became the curate-in-charge of St. Mary's, New Shoreham in 1846 and his experience there had a decisive effect on him. He was so shocked by the low level of education amongst the middle classes in Shoreham that he was inspired to start creating schools to improve the level of middle class education. Whilst at New Shoreham, he also greatly developed the use of choral music in the Church.

See also

• Holmbush Centre
• Shoreham Redoubt
• Southwick
• Lancing

External links

• Shoreham Herald web site
• Shoreham-by-Sea web site
• Shoreham Community Website
• Shoreham Port Authority
• Shoreham by Sea Methodist Church
• Shoreham Football Club