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.

Dilkusha bungalow and storm damage 1913

Continual searches through our collections over the years do lead to some images sticking in the memory and these are three of them. At the top is the well known postcard of Dilkusha bungalow and below it a view from the beach-side of the storm damage (1913 I think) to it and its neighbours, then another from the Widewater side.

1913 storm damaged bungalows

A successful bid for a set of 1913 storm-damaged bungalows on the beach provided a bit of a challenge as none of the bungalows in them were identified. An extensive trawl through our collections eventually matched them all and even managed to identify a long standing mystery bungalow that by coincidence stood close by!
You’ll see what we mean:- http://www.shorehambysea.com/catty-brown-and-framnaes/

Continue reading “1913 storm damaged bungalows”

Cosy Nook – Widewater

A bit of a coincidence this – looking through some of our collections and found a postcard from a Nelly Bayle to Mrs Daniels in Highbury. Nelly was staying at Cosy Nook in August of 1908, one of the bungalows that was damaged in the 1913 storm described in the earlier Catty Norman article and gives us a different take on the accommodation compared to the glowing compliments usually seen in postcards home. The lady doesn’t seem too impressed with Cosy Nook nor it’s ‘old carriages’ and you have to admit it did look quite plain. For her it was miles from anywhere and located as it was near the centre of Widewater beach I suppose it would have been a fairly long walk to a sufficient number of shops at Shoreham town or Worthing the other way.  She thought it ‘very primitive and quite down to the edge of the sea’ – something of a prophetic remark bearing in mind the subsequent storms.
37, Liberia Road was part of quite an attractive neighbourhood so perhaps Nelly was used to better things but of course she may not necessarily have lived there………. servant or companion perhaps? you could go on forever wondering couldn’t you!