Category: Blog

This blog contains articles and posts taken from the Shorehambysea.com Forum.

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Tales from postcards, returned

One hundred years ago the postal service was so good a letter sent to a Shoreham address in the morning from a person setting out from London would often arrive before the sender arrived home. Same day delivery also prompted the use of postcards for urgent messages. This one was used by the owner of Dolphin Chambers in 1911 to send to George Woolver asking him to repair one of the windows. It was addressed to him at his home address in Queens Place which is a bit strange as he had his workshop right next door to the Chambers at that time!

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Panoramas of Shoreham

Putting together old photos of different areas of a street or scene often gives more of a complete idea of things as they were. The first two here are already in place in the Michael Norman Collection (Brighton Road looking east and west) to which we’ve added a further two
–   Albion Place looking east to The Duke of Wellington and Tarmount beyond
–   The town from the church tower circa 1920. Due to it’s size this has to be a much reduced copy and as yet is not totally finished.
(click on the image to enlarge it )

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Longcroft: a history in postcards

J.B.Balley, ship builder and creator of Swiss Gardens built a grand house for himself in Longcroft field on the corner of Hebe and Southdown roads then later sold both to Edward Goodchild (previously landlord of Brunswick Arms) in the early 1860’s. As the main photo shows it became Queens School for girls and appears as such in the directories between 1920 and the start of WW2. The centre bay window column was added after 1898 – the rest of the houses up Southdown Road are out of shot to the right. You can just make out the top of the greenhouse shown on the 1912 map.

Continue reading “Longcroft: a history in postcards”
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Old Blockade Coastguard cottages

The old Blockade /Coastguard cottages and the lifeboat house stood on the beach at the junction of Beach Road with Ferry Road. The postcard (below) from Howard Porter shows a very unusual rear aspect of it on the right with the lifeboat house just beyond it.

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Shoreham’s cliff

We’re told that the inundations of the sea eroded the south east part of the town leaving a small cliff in the New Road area. It’s still there but now totally built over. The front part of the houses on the south side of the road are only two stories high but the backs of them have three.

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Swiss Mystery

This 1914 aircraft crash by the Shoreham/Horsham railway line bank shows buildings in the background that are difficult to identify. If the crash site is about point 1 then what is the long building at 2 to the left of the terrace of houses at Buckingham Street? The Swiss Cottage pub roof level may be too low to show above the bank and isn’t as long as that anyway. Was it a still standing building in the Gardens or the newly built, yet to be opened Victoria Road school?
The most likely surviving building is the one at 3 – it looks like two towers on a longish building but to the left of the trees that stood in the grounds of the school, but what was it?

Continue reading “Swiss Mystery”

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Ham Road

Not much left – even the council offices have gone since the colour photo was taken.
(using black & white photos from Marlipins  and Lofty’s Michael Norman collections)