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With every new photo there’s always something that catches your eye. We’ve seen photos of outside loos in BT (top left) but in the central photo of ‘Beach House’ and neighbouring bungalows on Widewater beach it’s the extensions onto the sides of both the nearest bungalows that draw your attention. They seem unnaturally narrow – perhaps a loo at the end, discreetly away from the main part of the bungalow? On the other hand there are stove pipes coming out of both – perhaps stoves for hot water isolated from the main building to lessen the fire risk? Perhaps a combination of both to provide a cosy sitting during natural breaks?
Anyway, the toilet answer seems likely as the photo of the 1910 storm shows soil pipes that line up with the front part of the bungalows – it also tells us that although we read about regular septic tank collections for BT there were certainly parts of the beach that had ‘sophisticated’ sewerage disposal!

The Kingston lighthouse was built in 1846. These 1837 vignettes include one (just barely visible) of the earlier lighthouse that stood in the grounds of Kingston House near the harbour entrance. A wooden structure with a square glass-windowed top. It sounds to have been a bit unsteady as concerns were expressed as to the damage that could be caused by passing trains when the line from Brighton was built.

Managed to buy this document on line recently. Don’t know much about the legalities of old documents and wonder if I’ve got it right with this one. Shoreham miller Henry Adams owned a number of properties during the 19th century including a bakery/shop in the High Street, a windmill in Mill Lane, a house in Victoria Road and another also in Mill Lane.
Continue reading “Henry Adams’ admission”

We know our coast line over the centuries has changed a lot. Eroded in some places – e.g., locally the loss of the village of Pende to the sea – but built up in others as evidenced by the spit created for Shoreham beach. Generally though it seems for the majority of the south since Roman times the coast has been eroded but by how much?
I’m sure erosion doesn’t happen at a constant rate but there is a indication in our 1724 Phillimore Margary map that has the attached notation entered just below Hove. It suggests that six perches were lost in 25 years. I’ve forgotten, perhaps never knew, the old surveying measurements so had to look up perches but anyway six of them apparently equate to 33 yards (still can’t be bothered with metric measurements) and with 1,760 yards to a mile (funny how some numbers stick in your mind and that one has) the loss at a constant rate would take 1,333 years to lose a mile.
I’ve never been good at sums and bet I’m wrong again but if for once I’m not then it seems when the Romans came our coast may have been a mile or two further out.

Shoreham millwright James Holloway is particularly well known for having invented the screw brake, a system that enabled the vanes of windmills to be slowed down gradually, thereby avoiding any damage caused by more sudden stops that occurred on conventionally operated mills.
He fitted one of his screw brakes on West Blatchington Mill (amongst others) but I had no record of him ever working on Lancing Mill. This is detail from a photo of the Lancing mill – is it part of the machinery to slow the vanes in which case I assume the chances are it was Holloway that fitted it?
http://www.shorehambysea.com/mills-millers-millwrights/

Not Holloway’s system apparently but a fascinating response from Peter James of the Sussex Mills Group:-
The wheel you can see at the back right of the buck is the ‘Striking Chain Wheel’ around which, there is a chain that goes down into a weight box (the long capped box below). There would have been access to this box within the mill and the miller would have a hung a weight on the chain. The striking wheel would be geared to the striking rod, probably via a rack and pinion. The striking rod ran through the centre of the windshaft and connected to a cast iron cross at the front. Linkages from this cross would connect all of the shutters in the sails. The linkages together with the cross are called ‘the spider’.

The miller would hang a weight on the chain, which would in effect hold the shutters closed against the strength of the wind. If the wind became too strong the shutters would open against this weight and ‘spill’ the wind, thus slowing down. Hence this is a form of automatic control – different weights could be used depending on the strength of the wind.