Overview
For many years, Worthing barely registered in our cultural consciousness: a slightly shabby if once-elegant seaside resort, with a cool pier, and lots of retiree residents, that took ages to drive through if you were heading west on the A27. In the last ten years or so, that started changing. The town’s relatively affordable house prices attracted an inundation of DFLs (Down from Londons) and AFBs (Across from Brightons) looking for somewhere on the sea, not far from the capital, to set up home. This process exploded after Covid, and while house prices have risen (average in November 2024 was £324,000, as opposed to £433,000 in Brighton and £524,000 in London) the influx of youngish professionals continues apace, and businesses and cultural venues are springing up to cater for them. Worthing (population 111,700 and counting) has become something of a cultural hotspot, dubbed ‘the new Hackney’ by The Times.
Which might be stretching things a bit, but hey.
History
In Stone Age times, between 4000 and 3500 BC, the Downs above Worthing could claim to host the largest industrial complex in the country, due to the extensive and remarkably sophisticated flint mines at Cissbury Ring and other nearby hillsides; the first known examples of figurative art were also found during the early Victorian excavations of the Neolithic site (see ROSA #2). Cissbury Ring was, too, the location of an Iron Age hillfort (or possibly a pagan temple) established around 350 BC; several hundred years later the Romans settled in the area. In Medieval times a community set up home on the coast below, led by a chieftain called Wurtha or Weorth. This became a prosperous fishing village in pre-medieval times, its name changing over the years from Ordinges (1086), Wurdding (1210), Wurthing (1240) and finally Worthing.
The settlement’s fortunes took a dramatic turn in the 18th century when sea bathing became a popular past-time for rich Londoners, and the village grew into a town to cater for their needs. But its reputation was tarnished by a series of A weekend in… Worthing 82 infamous riots in 1885, when the Skeleton Army (motto ‘Beef, Beer and Bacca’) battled against the Salvation Army (‘Soup, Soap and Salvation’), alarmed at the temperance movement’s predilection for closing down hostelries. This was followed by a typhoid epidemic in 1893, caused by poor sanitation, which killed around 200 people. The following year Oscar Wilde spent the summer in Worthing, writing The Importance of Being Earnest, naming the play’s main protagonist – Jack Worthing, of ‘a HANDbag’ fame – after the town. Some historians argue that the resort’s association with the Irish dandy cast a further shadow over Worthing’s reputation, around the time of his infamous trial in 1895. There was a revival in the Edwardian period, when Edward VII was a frequent visitor and Worthing’s facilities were enriched with the opening of plush venues such as the Dome (1910), the Connaught Theatre (1914), and the Pavilion Theatre (1926). Post WW2 the resort suffered an all-too-familiar decline as holidaymakers sought sunnier climes abroad, and the mid- 20th century saw the demolition of many of the town’s most elegant buildings. Grandeur became faded grandeur, edges grew shabby. But the tide is turning back again, the chic new Bayside building overlooking East Beach symbolising Worthing’s 21st-century resurgence.
Culture
We would urge any visiting weekender to find the time to buy a bucket of popcorn and take in a film at the elegant Dome Cinema, with its red velvet seats and state-of-the-art projection and sound systems. Try and catch a classic movie there, to add to the retro mood. Alternatively, pay a visit to the Streamline Moderne-style Connaught Theatre, which offers live drama and comedy as well as films.
As we write this, Worthing Museum & Gallery is about to close for nine months, to fix its heating system. This is a pity, as the free-entry venue, housed in a robust Edwardian Baroque-style building, offers great insight into the town’s history (including an extraordinary model of a Stone Age flint mine), as well as a gallery space for contemporary art. There are plenty of independent galleries to visit, however, particularly in the trendy Warwick Street area. We particularly recommend The Colonnade Gallery, which shows a different contemporary artist every week, and the newly established Sabotage Gallery, which exhibits a growing roster of colourful pop-art-style artists.
It’s also worth paying a visit to East Beach Art Studios, a row of converted beach huts where a colony of artists – including painters, printmakers, collagists, wood-turners and photographers – open their workspaces to the public at the weekend.
It would be easy to miss Worthing’s finest piece of public art, Elisabeth Frink’s Desert Quartet, perched on the wall at the back of the Montague Shopping Centre facing Liverpool Gardens. These four monumental heads, eternally grimacing at the indignity of the dried rivulets of pigeon poo running down their cheeks, were threatened to be sold off by the owners of the building, the Avon Group, in 2007. This led to a successful campaign by the Worthing Society, who ensured that the monument was granted Grade-II listed status, enabling the foursome’s continued residency.
Eating and drinking
On our latest visit to Worthing, we lunched at its trendiest eatery, Tern, a Michelin-Guide restaurant on the top floor of the Art Deco Southern Pavilion at the end of the pier. Unable to afford the full ten-course tasting menu on offer (£95 a head, or £170 with English wines paired to each course) we opted for a two-course set lunch menu (at a more palatable £30, with tap water). Our dishes were complemented by dainty amuse-bouches, and micro-loaves of bread. I’ve never before tasted such perfectly cooked pork belly slivers, nor appreciated the surprisingly compatible flavour combination of beetroot and chocolate. And what a view! This extraordinarily tasty, if disappointingly brief, gastronomic experience left us room to further explore Worthing’s culinary offerings. Dessert was provided by made-on-the-spot gelato at Fiordilatte on Warwick Street (best Stracciatella I’ve tasted this side of Bergamo), followed by an expertly made macchiato in Vinyl Audio Café in Stanford Square round the corner, which doubles as a record shop, cool jazz vibes thrown in. Dinner, several hours later, was moules and frites at the excellent Crab Shack on East Beach, which will certainly be revisited. Other options recommended to us by friendly locals, included European fusion at Vudu, and either of the two Perch restaurants, one underneath Tern on the pier, the other on the East beach. If you want to dine with the ghost of Jane Austen, try the Pizza Express just off Warwick Street, built on the site of the long-demolished home of her sister, where the author stayed for six weeks in 1805.
Worthing has its fair share of traditional pubs (the oldest, The George & Dragon, dates back to 1610), but is also home to an inordinately ample selection of micro-pubs and tap rooms selling craft beer. Particularly recommended are Anchored, The Tasting Room (which sells its own Merakai Brewery beer), Beer No Evil and The Old Bike Store. Ale aficionados should be told that no fewer than 16 hostelries, including those four, are taking part in a Tap Takeover on the weekend of April 25-27, each bar selling the wares of an out-of-town brewery.
Shopping
The pedestrianised Montague Street houses every chain store you might want to avoid on a cultural weekend break, but Worthing is also home to a bounty of independent shops, many of them set up by entrepreneurial newbies who already have retail experience in Brighton or London. You can’t walk far without being enticed into an indie outlet selling imaginative wares: we can recommend The Bookshop (Warwick Street), The Pantry Bakery (South Farm Road), First & Last (sustainable design and homeware, Brighton Road), Vinyl Audio Cafe (Stanford Square), hello DODO (screen-printed clothing by local designers, Tarring Road), DOWSE (stylish homeware and knick-knacks, Stanford Square), and Chintz and Wood (hand- crafted homeware, Brighton Road).
Accommodation
The elegant Highdown Hotel, a short walk from the centre of Worthing, offers 13 rooms above its pub and restaurant (at around £130 for a double). Built as a family manor house in 1807, it was the home of Sir Frederick Stern who imaginatively landscaped his nine-acre garden, which he bequeathed to the Council, who now run it as a much- loved public park. More central is the Chatworth Hotel, opposite Steyne Gardens, just off the seafront, Worthing’s largest and oldest hotel (£109). The building’s splendid Georgian façade is enhanced in the warmer months by a mantle of lush Virginia Creeper.
Next issue: Tunbridge Wells