During the past year research on Shoreham's history has been gradually added to the
shorehambysea.com web site. This included the superb high definition Sussex Archaeological Society image collection and, in the months since, further collections from
Doris Steers and
Peggy Bailey. On the forum side of things valued contributors such as Gerry White have provided a priceless record from their reminiscences of Shoreham and Shoreham life over half a century ago.
With the increasing material and interest generated from it we soon realised that things needed to be drawn together. To begin with Paul Osborne designed some impressive banners for the history articles and Pete Farrington has carried out some incredible technical work to the programme to produce the history portal you see now. We are constantly looking out for new material for the web site and are endeavouring to include more reference items such as street directories and census returns so that visitors may search for information themselves.
Hopefully this will inspire those amongst you who enjoy the town’s history enough to carry out your own research or, for example, write that part of your family history that involves Shoreham, copies of photos etc., to include on this portal. Please do continue to post shorter anecdotes, reminiscences etc., to the history forum which Paul as ever (as well as other members) will be pleased to read and perhaps add to with his local knowledge and reference material.
Roger Bateman has long been fascinated by Shoreham’s history and has researched and written a number of articles including the story of the Butler family, published under the title ‘Memories of a Shoreham Seafaring Family.’
Paul Osborne is a former Shoreham resident and runs a number of local history websites. He is passionate about the value of social media and the role websites play in keeping local history alive: “The SBS website is a very effective way to collate and distribute written and illustrative historical material to a wide audience. I hope that we can build a comprehensive archive and forum that rivals the very best of community websites.”
