History and overview
The name ‘Shoreham’ looks initially to have a simple etymological explanation (a hamlet on the shore?) but don’t be fooled: Mesolithic and Neolithic communities settled on land that was a good mile from the seashore, on the banks of the Adur, at the foot of Mill Hill. The Saxons arrived in the seventh century, giving their agricultural village a new name: probably ‘scora-hamm’ meaning peninsular (hamm) overlooked by a slope (scora).
The Norman Lord William de Braose and his son Philip founded ‘New Shoreham’ in the years following 1086, on the estuary where the Adur flowed into the English Channel, in a grid pattern around the High Street. This became one of the most important channel ports, and the nearest to London, made a ‘Royal Port’ in 1208 by King John. Shoreham soon became a major shipbuilding centre, supplying naval vessels for both the merchant trade and the Royal Navy until well into the 19th century. The best place to find out more about the town’s maritime history is at Marlipins, on the High Street, where a fine museum is housed in what is thought to be the country’s oldest secular building, dating from the 12th century, with its curious chequerboard f lint-and-Caen stone façade.
The town’s fortunes ebbed and flowed, with a boom after the late 18th century when improvements were made to the harbour. In 1910 New Shoreham was renamed ‘Shoreham-by-Sea’ and the two villages were joined together by new housing developments. A third settlement soon grew up on the Shoreham Beach peninsular, across the estuary, where a community of stage and screen stars, such as Sybil Thorndike and Ida Lupino, took residence in converted railway carriages and jerry-built bungalows. These included several influential filmmakers who set up movie studios either side of WW1. Easy access to the town centre was facilitated by the erection of a footbridge in 1921. By then Shoreham also boasted its own airport, its elegant Art Deco terminal built in 1936.
Today, boosted by the completion of the Adur Tidal Walls scheme in 2019, and major ongoing regeneration of Shoreham Harbour, the town has a prosperous feel to it, well served as it is with bars, restaurants and cultural hubs, with a monthly farmer’s market and a healthy influx (rather than overwhelming invasion) of mainly day tripping tourists. While now engulfed by the conurbation that stretches west to Littlehampton and east to Saltdean, the town very much retains its own character, leading to a stream of recent residents attracted by the reasonable house-prices. An average sized detached house, according to Rightmove’s latest figures, will set you back £607,000, compared to £847,000 in Brighton & Hove.
Shoreham Beach
That figure rises to north of a million if you’re looking for one of the eclectic houses on the shingle. A stroll along the boardwalk towards the remains of Shoreham Fort (built in 1857 as part of Britain’s coastal defence strategy) is architecturally fascinating. Every house is a unique experience, from Tudorbethan to Art Deco to 60s chalet style, with, unfortunately, a growing number of 21st-century monster boxes. Walk back along Old Fort Road to see the facades.
This millionaire’s row is a far cry from the ramshackle bungalows it replaced, but the culturally anarchic spirit of ‘Hollywood-on-Sea’ can be found the other side of the footbridge, where a community of houseboat owners has settled since the end of WW2, in a curious hotchpotch of grounded vessels, some of them ex-military, most of them consciously eccentric, and boasting interesting names: Twinkle, Bimini, Jandora, Mabel Vegas, Moluscule. This community, said to live in the biggest collection of houseboats in the country, has become something of an unlikely tourist attraction.
St Mary de Haura
New Shoreham’s Norman church, founded in 1096, is a splendid monument, inside and out, with its Romanesque arcades (all winged beasts, scallop capitals and intertwined foliage) and Gothic flourishes, including two f lying buttresses on the south side of the chancel. Its churchyard, the largest green area in the town centre, is an oasis of calm, with well-tended flowerbeds, ancient gravestones and visible remnants of long-ruined sections of the church, which was once twice the size, but fell into decline in the late medieval period.
Culture
The cornerstone of Shoreham’s cultural life is the Ropetackle Arts Centre, built in 2006 at the Norfolk Bridge end of the High Street as part of a redevelopment of the brownfield riverside area that had once housed the town’s thriving rope-making industry, as well as a gasworks, incinerator and mortuary. It’s a rather ugly post-modern building, an architectural bunfight of flint and glass and brise soleil, with a central wood-clad tower designed to recall net-drying huts. But it houses a well-loved, community run enterprise that puts on an extremely varied programme. Highlights of the autumn season include The Brighton Beach Boys, Martin Stephenson and the Daintees, and Rory Bremner, as well as the Shoreham Wordfest. This annual festival is run across a variety of venues including the Shoreham Centre, a blocky, low-rise building with distinctive dormer windows, offering a mixed itinerary, from Zumba classes to art shows in the Skywalk Gallery. Beyond this, several pubs put on live music, notably The Wellington, aka ‘The Welly’, which hosts bands throughout the year (Fatboy Slim has been known to play there). The pub has been described as a ‘sweetie shop for beer lovers’.
Eating and drinking
The Welly aside, there’s a pub-crawl’s worth of fine drinking dens in Shoreham, including the no-frills, barrels-for-seats Old Star, a micropub just off the High Street, which serves cask and keg ales, cider and a surprisingly reasonably priced and perfectly made Negroni. An antidote to this, just round the corner, is The Royal Sovereign, a Tamplins-tiled, swirly carpeted old-fellah pub which makes you feel like you’ve stepped back into the 80s. Or maybe even the 70s.
The last time we visited Shoreham, in mid-August, we had an unforgettable meal in Into the Blue, just over the footbridge in Shoreham Beach. This extremely friendly, family-run business offers ‘surf and turf’, but we went exclusively for the sharing menu of seafood: hake steak, octopus, squid, and crab, imaginatively plated up with sides of minted vegetables and ‘Indian potatoes’, a house speciality, and rightly so. There’s nothing glamorous about the restaurant, which overlooks a four-storey 60s housing block, but it’s all the better for that: if it were on the beachfront they’d be charging twice the price, and it would be full of tourists rather than locals. Another recommendation, for brunch or lunch, is Samy’s Place, a Spanish tapas bar on the High Street offering meatballs in their house tomato sauce, whitebait in aioli and the like, in an intimate setting. For home-baked cake and coffee, try Hector’s Shed, overlooking St Mary’s Church, which also specialises in vegetarian snacks and lunches, including very possibly the best Welsh Rarebit east of Cardiff.
Shopping
The best time to visit Shoreham, if you’re looking for a foodie buzz with a local accent, is on the second Saturday of every month, when the Farmers’ Market comes to town. Expect small-batch ciders, hedgerow cordials, spiced loaves, heritage apples, hot seasonal street food, preserves and chutneys… and, from October onwards, wool crafts, ceramics and (dare we say it so early?) seasonal gift ideas. Every fourth Saturday, the town centre hosts the Shoreham Artisans’ Market offering arts, crafts, food and drink from 50+ regional traders. Both markets run from 9am to 1pm.
The town boasts an above-average array of thrift stores and junk shops if pre-loved items are your bag: for vintage fashion and upcycled garments try SOLD, with its colourfully clad mannequins in the window; for historical curios Alchemy Antiques is worth a browse, as is Tarmount Studios Vintage Emporium. For artsy-crafty homeware/ lifestyle, often in beige, try The Living Room; for oddball and Scandi-minimalist try Neighbourhood Store. Chapter 34, meanwhile, is a well-run independent bookshop with a social conscience, and nearby Palate is an excellent outlet for fine wine and craft beer that you can drink in or take away.
Accommodation
If you’re planning to turn your day-trip into a weekend, we’d recommend you make the most of Shoreham’s setting and stay in a houseboat. The quirkiest (which is saying something) are those designed by anarchic boat-builder Hamish Mackenzie using old upcycled vehicles (such as a Reliant Robin and a f ire engine) and household appliances, which he rents out as bed-and-breakfast accommodation (check out ‘The Quirky Houseboat Dodge’ on Airbnb).
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