Beside the Seaside

FOR centuries, Worthing was a mere handful of fishermen’s cottages that made up a tiny part of the parish of Broadwater.

 It always had the sea on its southern flank and when, during the Regency period, an occasional traveller from London was tempted into the area, this was one of the aspects he found so appealing.
     By coincidence, eminent medical men at that time were propounding the health-giving properties of sea-water. 

 In the following decade, several members of the royal family visited Worthing on the advice of their doctors and the tiny hamlet by the sea was set on a course of expansion and success from which it has never wavered.
     But none of this would have happened without Worthing’s miles of safe, gently shelved beach, the changes to which artists and photographers have recorded over the past 200 years. 

     Here are pictures that remind us that summers long ago could also be very hot, even if our ancestors seemed unable to dress comfortably for the occasion!