Where did you get that hat?

“HOW delightful to see them all wearing hats,” wrote a reader after viewing a photograph of a group of Victorian women relaxing on Worthing seafront in the 1890s. 

“It’s a fashion – or tradition – that has long since disappeared. What a pity.” If that photograph gave pleasure, this one could arouse feelings of ecstasy. It was taken in The Kursaal – today known as the Dome Cinema – on Worthing seafront. It shows a party of local schoolgirls and their teachers during a party to celebrate King George V’s Coronation Day in July, 1911. The array of hats must have kept the milliners of Worthing busy for weeks!