Brighton on His Deeds Are Dust

Shoreham survey

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:55:41 +0100

I spent a lovely, blue-skied morning walking around Shoreham-by-Sea yesterday, conducting a survey for OpenStreetMap. The purpose of the survey was mainly to look at the shops and businesses in the centre, with a definite side quest to sit with a coffee and almond croissant and do some people-watching, if the opportunity should present itself.

I parked up in the Shoreham beach area, the finger of land beneath the town ‘proper’ that ends in the hard nail of Shoreham fort. I did this to avoid time pressures in town centre car parks and cost, while also noting that I could whip out StreetComplete on the walk into town and note some house numbers.

Many of the houses along the river have beach gardens, by which I mean those kinds of garden that are curated rather than grown. You start with a base of gravel instead of a lawn, and you arrange larger stones and rockery plants. The top layer is accumulated ‘findings,’ the treasure you gather from long walks along the beach, such as driftwood, colourful stones and maybe an old fisherman’s float.

Boats and houses wait for the tide.

When you walk north across the Adur Ferry Bridge, you come into Shoreham town and here, you note that nearly everything you see is so old that most of what you observe has changed in both name and purpose over the last several hundred years.

None of the streets have their original names, as a second sign on each street will cheerfully proclaim. Church Street was originally Star Lane, named for the pub, West Street was formerly White Lion Street, named for the pub, and so on. Even the High Street, which you’d imagine had been that since time immemorial, was originally Procession Street, after the pub (well, maybe not in that case!)

‘So good they named it twice.’

This re-purposing extends to the buildings. The oldest buildings along the High Street seem to be two old cottages from 1706, which are now the Indian Cottage Tandoori. The brightly-painted Ferry Inn, established 1731, seems to be the exception to the rule here, as even the Town Hall has become the Funky Dragon Chinese restaurant.

The Indian Cottage Tandoori, in buildings dating from 1706.

One of the joys of this change of use is spotting the history in the bones of the buildings, which generally involves looking up at the rooflines instead of down at the pavement. Up on the second or third storeys, along the gables or inter-window plaster work, you’ll see ghost signs and old house names, hidden from those who are simply seeking shop signs.

A ghost sign on the gable proclaims this as the home of Robins Ltd., Wine Merchants. Between the windows on the first floor, it informs us that Ye Olde Wine Shoppe was rebuilt in 1919.

Further up East Street, we come across the church of St. Mary de Haura. I have no idea how to pronounce this, so I always have a schoolboy snigger at the imagined etymology, much worse than the ‘Mary at the Harbour’ reality.

The 11th century church of St. Mary de Haura

Just north-east of here we have St Mary’s House, where a blue plaque informs us that this was the original school of St. Mary and St. Nicolas that would later grow and move up the road to become Lancing College.

St. Mary’s House

Blue plaque explaining the origins of Lancing College

To the east, down St. Mary’s Road, we see the Methodist Church, which I photographed in an attempt to make sense of the single building blob that currently appears on OpenStreetMap. It looks, for all the world, as if they have a very modern and sophisticated method of talking to God but this impression is dispelled when you walk behind and see that the various antennas are actually plomped on the Telephone Exchange. A friend of mind used to work for BT and he always said “Look for the ugliest building in any town; that’s the Telephone Exchange.” The irony of this is that we both used to live in Crawley, where applying this rule would lead you to the conclusion that the entire bloody town is a Telephone Exchange.

The Methodist Church of St. Mary of the 5G, with antennas galore

I had my coffee and almond croissant at the River Cafe in the High Street. I took 230 photographs over the course of three hours and had 151 of them rejected by Panoramax as being too close to each other. I guess that’s the penalty of walking pace. However, the photos informed six hours of editing OpenStreetMap yesterday evening and this morning, so I rate that as a grand day.

Fulking survey

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Today, I spent a lovely bright morning having a walk-cum-scramble around the village of Fulking, just north of Brighton. I encountered beauty and history with every step, as I surveyed the village and surroundings for OpenStreetMap. I had with me a checklist of ten questions that I wanted answers to, so they were going to direct my path around the village.

I parked in a layby just west of the village itself and headed south along a track that starts to climb up towards Devil’s Dyke. I passed a couple National Trust workers who had been maintaining the area around my quest: the old lime kiln.

Fulking lime kiln

Originally each parish would have had one of these kilns, with a bottle-shaped hole in the top (now safely filled with stone) and the exit hole for the lime at the bottom. It would have been filled with chalk quarried from the face of the scarp just north of the kiln, and the results used for agriculture and building. The National Trust got a grant to maintain this one about 20 years ago, and they have restored the front face of the kiln to its original pattern.

In 1901 a homeless labourer called Alfred Squires was left all night to die here, while Poor Law officials and the doctor argued about the paperwork required to move him. When the doctor finally attended, the next morning, he had died of heart disease. The Worthing Gazette of 8 May 1901 reported that ‘the man would have died in any case,’ while admitting that ‘the lime kiln was the worst possible place to leave a man in that condition.’ Grim stuff.

From here, I scrambled across a dirt trail eastwards and walked back north to the main road, noting stiles and steps along the way. Fulking greets you with a painted sign by local artist Nicholas Bremer, which is apparently just one of a seasonal set!

The Fulking village sign, on the road west

Fulking stream runs along the south side of the road for a short while here, then cuts through a culvert to the north. I tried to fish what appeared to be a wooden sign about the culvert from the stream but it turned out to be blank. I’m guessing it was more warning than information sign anyway. OpenStreetMap was showing the stream running to the north of the road for most of the way, so I corrected that.

Walking east towards the Shepherd and Dog pub, we see a curious tiny building on the right and the stream running freely out of the wall. An information board (now mapped) explains that John Ruskin and local businessman Henry Willett devised and implemented a scheme to pump water from the stream for the use of the village, supplying some hand pumps up the road. Here we have the pump house, which houses a ram pump that noisily did service from about 1886 until mains water took over in 1951. Today there is a sign warning that this is not drinking water.

The pump house and stream

‘He sendeth springs into the valleys which run among the hills. Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness.’

Up the hill, passing the Shepherd and Dog, which is not yet open, I’m reminded of Keith Floyd who I think was wandering round Ireland, saying ‘when you walk around here, you’ll pass pubs every few steps, which is a great mistake!’ and then he doubled back and popped through the door.

As well as the hand pumps, the pump house supplied a drinking fountain in the village, which was erected as a tribute to John Ruskin. Neither of the taps work today.

To the glory of God and in honour of John Ruskin. Psalm LXXVIII ‘That they might set their hope in God and not forget but keep his Commandments who brought streams also out of the rock.’

Just beyond the drinking fountain, a gate leads north into a little park area, which a children’s play area on one side. One of the two benches here was already mapped, so I mapped the other and checked the directions that they were facing. Here there are a line of hornbeams, an ash and an exuberant Japanese cherry. I mapped the line of hornbeams and only now, looking through the photos, I realise that I didn’t map the cherry.

An exuberant Japanese cherry, with a hornbeam behind

Out from the park and back onto the main street which is called The Street. One of my survey questions was to determine whether there were any signs naming the main road through the village, and where they were. As it happens, there are none. There are plenty of indications that the street is The Street but precisely where it begins and ends is anyone’s guess. At the eastern end of the village, houses on one side of the road are on the The Street, but the houses the other side are on Poynings Road.

As you would expect, many of the houses in a place this small are named rather than numbered, including all the houses along The Street itself. One of these, set well back from the road, is The Croft and it has a blue plaque on the right-hand gatepost, proclaiming its association with Dr. William Moon.

Blue plaque for Dr. Moon

The text on the plaque is:

William Moon LL.D (1818‒1894) lived in this house.

Dr. William Moon, himself blind, was the inventor of the special embossed alphabet which bears his name and was designed to enable the blind to read by touch. His pioneer educational and welfare activities are still continued today by the Blatchington Court Trust and the Brighton Society for the Blind.

Further along the street there is an example of one of the hand pumps. It was manufactured in Lewes by Charles A. Wells. It no longers works either, which means that I couldn’t refill my water bottle anywhere in the village that had been so adequately supplied 150 years ago.

A hand pump in front of Fulking Farm House.

Just behind me at this point is one of the thatched houses in the village. It is called Thatchly and looks like something out of Hobbiton, with a round entrance hole in the front wall.

The thatched ‘Thatchly’

From here, I had a walk up Clappers Lane to number houses and then snapped a picture of the village from Perching Hill before heading back to the car.

Fulking from up on Perching Hill, looking north-east

The route, questions and answers 🔗

Is the lime kiln where the map shows it to be? Yes
Does the phone box contain a working phone? Yes, for now. BT have placed a note in October 2025 announcing their plans to decommission it.
Is the Ruskin tap working? No, neither tap is.
Does the spring itself have a tap? No, and there is a sign saying that the spring water should not be drunk.
Where does The Street become Edburton Road and Poynings Road. Not entirely clear, so I’ve left the existing assumptions in place. There are no signs.
Is the village sign in place? Yes, and very attractive it is, too.
Does the playground have a sign and bins? No sign, but I mapped the dog poo bin.
What does the plaque on the gate of ‘The Croft’ say? Photographed for OpenPlaques.
Any street furniture need mapping? Another bench, information board, pump house, hand pump and drinking fountain added.

In total, I closed four notes and opened one new one, to remind me to recheck when the phone is finally removed.

News from 1796: Brighton's Director of Tourism still up for grabs

Wed, 02 May 2012 13:05:10 +0100

While hunting for reading matter on the history of Brighton, I came across Anthony Pasquin’s New Brighton Guide. As well as being a very funny satirical poem, he also gives us this prose portrait of Brighton in a footnote:

Brighthelmstone, or Brighton, in Sussex, is 54 miles from London.—It was, like Amsterdam, a miserable-fishing town, but is now a place of importance, to which it was raised by the countenance and bounty of the Prince of Wales. The houses are, generally speaking, more inconvenient than unhandsome; and the streets are narrow and irregular. In the year 1699, more than 100 huts were swallowed by the sea; and in a few years more, all the tenements on the Cliffs will be similarly devoured, unless a very formidable embankment is erected to resist that imperious element.

It is one of those numerous watering-places which beskirt this polluted island, and operate as apologies for idleness, sensuality, and nearly all the ramifications of social imposture: where the barren seek a stimulus for fecundity; the voluptuary to wash the cobwebs from the interstices of his flaccid anatomy; and the swag-bellied denizen, the rancid adhesion of old cheese, Irish butter, junk, assa-fœtida, tallow, mundungus, and train-oil.

There are two taverns, namely, the Castle and the Old Ship, where the richer visitors resort; and at each of these houses a weekly assembly is held, where a master of the ceremonies attends, to arrange the parties, not according to the scale of utility, but that of aristocracy.

There is a ball every Monday at the Castle, and on Thursdays at the Old Ship: every subscriber pays three shillings and sixpence, and every non-subscriber five shillings; for which they are entitled to a beverage which they call tea and coffee.

The masters of the respective inns receive the profits, except on those nights appointed for the benefit of the master of the ceremonies; to whom all, who wish to be arranged as people of distinction, subscribe one guinea—and who would not purchase distinction at so cheap a rate? Independently of this vain douceur, this must pay most liberally for their tickets! The card assemblies are on Wednesdays and Fridays.

There is an hotel, which was intended as a country Hummums, or grand dormitory; but, in my weak opinion, the establishment is somewhat inefficient, unless it can be supposed that the tumultuous equipment of stage-coaches, at the dawn of day, is contributory to the purposes of rest.

There is a theatre, commodious, and generally well directed; the nights of performance are Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. At the lower end of North-street is a sort of Birmingham Vauxhall, called the Promenade Grove: it is a small inclosure of a paddock, tormented from its native simplicity, befringed with a few gawkey poplars, and decorated with flowers, bowers, benches, frogs, ground-ivy, a ditch, and a wooden box for the minstrels.

The coast is like the greater part of its visitors, bold, saucy, intrusive, and dangerous.

The bathing-machines, even for the ladies, have no awning of covering, as at Weymouth, Margate, and Scarborough; consequently they are all severely inspected by the aid of telescopes, not only as they confusedly ascend from the sea, but as they kick and sprawl and flounder about its muddy margin, like so many mad Naiads in flannel smocks:—the shore is so disastrously imperfect, that those beginners who paddle in, are injured by the shocking repulsion of the juices to the brain; and of those who are enabled to plunge in, and swim beyond the surge, it is somewhat less than an even bet that many never return—in truth, the loss of lives here every season, would make any society miserable, who were not congregating in the mart of noisy folly.

There is a Subscription House, or Temple of Fortune, on the Steyne, where the minor part of our blessed nobility are accustomed to reduce their characters and their estates in the same period;—the signal for admittance is habeo—for rejection, debeo.

There are lodgings of all descriptions and fitness, from twenty pounds per week on the Cliffs, to half a crown per night in a stable; and the sinews of morality are so happily relaxed, that a bawd and a baroness may snore in the same tenement;—the keepers of the lodging-houses, like the keepers of mad-houses, having but one common point in view—to bleed the parties sufficiently.

There are carriages and caravans of all shapes and dimensions, from a waggon to a fish-cart; in which you may move like a king, a criminal, or a crab, that is, forwards, backwards, or laterally.

There are two libraries on the Steyne, replete with every flimsy species of novels, involving the prodigious intrigues of an imaginary society: this kind of recreation is termed light reading; perhaps from the certain effect it has upon the brains of my young countrywomen, of making them light-headed!

There is a parish church, where the canaille go to pray; but as that is on a hill, and the gentry found their sabbath visit to the Almighty very troublesome, the amiable and accommodating master priest has consigned the care of his common parish mutton to his journeyman, the curate, and has kindly raised a Chapel Royal for the lambs of fashion, where a certain sum is paid for every seat: and this, it must be admitted, is as it should be; as a well-bred Deity will assuredly be more attentive to a reclining Dutchess, parrying the assaults of the devil behind her fan, than the vulgar piety of a plebeian on his knees.

There were books open in the circulating libraries, where you were requested to contribute your mite of charity to the support of the rector, as his income is somewhat less than seven hundred pounds a year; the last incumbent died worth thirty thousand pounds. During the first dawnings of convalescence after the suspension of the King’s intellectual faculties, he asked Dr. Willis how much he netted by his Lincolnshire pluralities—“Eight hundred per year,” was the reply.—“Then why,” added the monarch, “do you, who are so rich, undertake to cure mad people for hire?”—“I imitate Jesus Christ, sire, who went about doing good.”—“Yes; but,” rejoined his Majesty, “in the first place, Jesus Christ did good for nothing; and in the second, he had not eight hundred a year, my friend!”

The full work is available at the Internet Archive.