Shoreham has had the dubious honour in the past (to be accurate, in 1770) of having its returning officer for Parliamentary elections summoned to the Bar of the House to give an account of his misdeeds. It happened in this way. The Borough in those days sent two representatives to Parliament, and it occurred to a body of ingenious souls that these elections might be made the source of much profit to themselves, so they formed themselves into an organization called the Christian Club! It met at the inn for the reputed purpose of transacting charitable and other highly commendable business. The members were not summoned by the usual means of letters or verbal notice, but by the hoisting of a certain flag on the inn. The funds by which the members used to grant assistance to each other were the proceeds of “rigged” elections. In those days there were comparatively few electors, so that most were members of the Christian Society; but at last their real object was discovered. One of the defeated candidates lodged a petition, and it was then found that the Returning Officer had calmly secured the election of the gentleman who enjoyed (on the payment of an agreed and substantial sum) the good will of the Christian Society members, by the simple expedient of disallowing the votes recorded for his opponent. It is said that this revelation of corruption helped materially the passing of the great Reform Bill. However that may be, the Returning Officer was severely censured, the right of voting was extended to every forty-shilling holder in the Rape of Bramber; and as a punishment no less than eighty-five (or about three-fifths) of the Shoreham “free and independent” electors were disfranchised.
It is New Shoreham that most people see, and that usually passes under the name of Shoreham. The old Shoreham, with its interesting and fine Norman church, is but a tiny place nowadays, famous chiefly for its wooden bridge over the Adur leading to the old smuggling inn known as the Old Sussex Pad, which was burned to the ground a few years ago, and was once the haunt and hiding place of the most notorious smugglers of the district, and literally honeycombed with secret chambers, “tub holes,” and recesses for the stowing away “of humans when there was a hue and cry, and smuggled goods.”
New Shoreham Church, dating from about 1100, is one of the finest in Sussex. It was once attached to the Abbey of Saumur, to which foundation it was presented by William de Braoze, Lord of Bramber.... It is around this church of St Mary that by far the oldest and most picturesque portion of the little town is found. Here the eighteenth-century houses, grey and time worn, and perhaps a little sedate in appearance, are grouped so that they form a little colony of ancient things by themselves, and have a charm which few fail to appreciate. In one of them once lived a certain Captain Henry Roberts, a Shoreham man, who accompanied Captain Cook on several of his voyages, and ultimately died of fever at sea. In others dwelt several merchants of distinction at the end of the eighteenth century, whose wealth rumour asserted was not unconnected with smuggling, privateering, and the slave trade.
Two poets of great distinction have found inspiration at Shoreham (and how many artists with brush and colours we wonder?), and have written of the old church, and the shallow, yellow, and almost currentless stream, which when the tide has rushed Channel-ward is little more than a large ditch, and leaves a great expanse of sand, mud flats, and oyster beds uncovered. The fine poem On the South Coast in Astrophel, and other Poems, by Mr Swinburne is too long for complete quotation. Here, however, is a portion which calls up Shoreham to the memory:
Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the first ray peers;
Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Shoreham, crowned with the grace of years;
Shoreham, clad with the sunset, glad and grave with glory that death reveres.
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Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, spread as a flower that spreads,
Pave with rarer device and fairer than heaven’s the luminous oyster-beds,
Grass-embanked, and in square plots ranked, inlaid with gems that the sundown sheds.
Squares more bright and with lovelier light than heaven that kindled it shines with shine
Warm and soft as the dome aloft, but heavenlier yet than the sun’s own shrine:
Heaven is high, but the water-sky lit here seems deeper and more divine.
But one must not linger by the way, for the harbour itself, as we have already said, is not one to remain over long in.