My grandpa’s family lived in Littlehampton for most of the nineteenth and twentieth century, and there is the wife of the one remaining of his nephews. I visited many, many years ago, with my family, and then again two years ago on my own; I wandered about and found the house where my grandpa was recorded as having lived in the censuses. Of course house numbers change, but the road is the same road, and I could understand having visited how close my great-grandfather was to his work in the timber yards along the seafront.
Grandpa didn’t live here in this pretty little cottage, but he lived not far away and he would have known this place when he was growing up here.
Littlehampton, like Weston-super-Mare where I live now, was a fishing village from earliest times, and like Weston there is evidence of prehistoric peoples living along the coast here, harvesting the sea, and finding safe shelter on the higher ground. Like Weston, there was Roman activity in the area, and once the Romans left, no doubt the native peoples lived as they had done before, fishing, farming, trading. With the fashion for sea-bathing, Weston began to attract tourists in the late eighteenth century, but it wasn’t until the railway arrived in 1841 that the village began to expand and become the focus of increasing tourism. Unlike Littlehampton, Weston never had the potential to develop as a port although traders from earliest times came up the river Axe by our little village of Uphill. The Axe is nothing like the River Arun at Littlehampton. Littlehampton became a centre for fishing and boat and ship-building, and being on the south coast was very near continental Europe to trade with.
Littlehampton maybe a much quieter place now, but it is still charming, and a pleasant place to visit on a sunny day.
Find out more about Littlehampton here:
http://www.mylittlehampton.co.uk/history.html
Lois Elsden 