From the North Foreland to Penzance

by Clive Holland

And so up anchor and away with the ebb down the coast; flat and uninteresting now, though in the background at first rise pleasant heights, with Lancing College buildings and Chapel amid some trees on the slope of a ridge above the Adur. That strange conglomeration of derelictions from duties manifold converted into the semblance of quite imposing and sometimes artistic habitations known as “Bungalow Town” is soon passed; and then the serried rows of houses marking Worthing sea-front soon lie stretched out along the low, shingly shore. But there is nothing here to detain us, for Worthing has not much history that concerns us, and is not a port (though a pleasant spot enough and picturesque) with the conspicuous clump of trees marking ancient Chanctonbury Rings to the north, and we are bound for the last haven we shall enter before dropping anchor in the busy waters of Portsmouth Harbour.

Littlehampton is a quaint port on the River Arun, which is so delightful from just beyond Ford Junction onwards. All the way to Pulborough one has flower-decked fields, old and ruined castles, picturesque villages, and historic manor-houses to cause one to stray from the river’s bank on exploration bent. Of course, there is no great depth of water much above Arundel for even small craft; though fairly large vessels can get up as far as Arundel town bridge.

Formerly Littlehampton, which has a narrow but picturesque entry past the jetty with its lighthouse, and the windmill in the background, was a place with trade of some considerable importance, which the rise of Newhaven much injured.

The place, like Shoreham, has attracted many artists, amongst them that charming painter of truly English rural landscapes Mr B. W. Leader, R.A. The town should be celebrated if for nothing else for its sunsets. “Out of Italy,” exclaims one enthusiastic artist, “I have seen no sunsets with such a range and splendour of tints as at Littlehampton in Sussex.”

The town can, however, also lay claim to some antiquity, for an allusion to it appears in the Domesday Book, proving that it was then a place within the usual meaning of the word. But even before then it was known as “Hanton,” was held in Anglo-Saxon times by one “Countess Goda, and furnished land for one plough, with two cottars and one acre of meadow.” For long from its position near the mouth of the Arun it was known as the Port of Arundel, the estuary being in ancient times much wider than one would now imagine. In former times the town seems to have attained to considerable size and importance, owing chiefly to the trade between it and the Conqueror’s Duchy and the passage to and fro “of many notable knights and commoner folk.”

It was here that William Rufus landed in 1097 after one of his periodical visits to his Duchy. And to Littlehampton came some of the prisoners from Crecy, brought hither across seas by Richard FitzAlan, the 13th Earl of Arundel, in 1347. He was wise to bring them if the story is true that their “ransoms were of so great a summe that they served to paye for the building of the Great Hall at Arundell,” and other additions.

Another Richard FitzAlan (his grandson), in the reign of Henry IV, brought no less than eighty French ships captured in the Channel, and laden with 20,000 tuns of wine, into the port; which Froissart averred made it possible to purchase in London the best wine for fourpence a gallon! And at Littlehampton? Well, small wonder that “men and wenches were merry, and had full stomachs and light hearts for many a day thereafter.”

Many other strange things and important personages throughout the centuries were landed at this little Sussex port, amongst them “a great wale,” and Philip Howard, who, after having been taken on the high seas, was brought to Littlehampton, and conveyed thence to London, the Tower, and the scaffold.

Its trade in the Middle Ages would appear from contemporary accounts of its houses, buildings and population, and maps to have been much larger than the size of the place would lead one to presume. In 1672, however, it had only its church, manor house, and fourteen other dwelling houses, and a few warehouses. But during the succeeding hundred years several attempts were made to improve the harbour, and the depth of water over the bar, and from the Grub Street Journal of January 1, 1736, a copy of which, framed and glazed, is now in the possession of one of the inhabitants, we learn “The new Harbour at Littlehampton in Sussex was opened on Monday, and there was 7 feet of water at half spring tide, and 9 feet when the tide was highest, and in all likelihood it will prove the best harbour on that coast.”

But these high hopes were destined to be unrealized, and Littlehampton has made practically no progress as a port during the last hundred years, though its popularity as a pleasant and pretty holiday resort is ever increasing. It was to the Earl of Surrey in 1790 that the town owed its start as a health resort, and after Surrey House was built other fashionable folk resorted hither.