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Friday, 30th July 2010

 
The missing link

While Bavaria boasts the most romantic road in Europe – the one that winds past King Ludwig’s fairytale castle at Neuschwanstein – and the M25 has been voted the favourite road of many British drivers because “it is the only place you get the chance to relax and watch the world go by,” it was Worthing and Lancing that for more than a century had what our ancestors witheringly described as “the most unreliable road in the kingdom”.
Two hundred years ago, it was tentatively known as the Lancing Road but today, it is Brighton Road. Freddie Feest recalls the perfectly understandable reasons for its Victorian vilification.

TODAY, much of its heaviest traffic has gone back to using the newer, theoretically faster, inland route and few drivers realise that the invaluable, well-used coast road that links Worthing with Lancing and Shoreham has a long and extraordinarily troubled history.


The Norfolk suspension bridge over the River Adur was opened in May, 1833, and cut two miles off the journey between Worthing and Shoreham or Brighton.


Until the early 1800s there was no coastal road between Worthing and what was then known as Lower Lancing. The result was that Worthing itself was completely bypassed by traffic between Brighton and the west, which ran either through Steyning or Sompting and Broadwater to Arundel and Chichester.

A map of Worthing printed in 1780 shows the present Brighton Road, then known as East Lane, ending just opposite St George’s Road with a sharp turn south towards the sea, over land that has long since been washed away.

The development of Worthing as a seaside resort began in 1807 and it was the resulting Broadwater Enclosure Act that led to the authorisation of a lower Lancing road linking Worthing and Lancing with Shoreham.

When the Worthing Town Commissioners met on  September 4, 1807, they decided the proposed road should run towards Brighton from the corner of Mr Ogle’s wall in East Lane, i.e. the boundary wall of Warwick House, at the southern end of the High Street. This was lined by a row of fine elm trees, which were taken into the roadway when the estate was re-developed at the beginning of the 19th century.

Two months later, a road engineer named Heath, from Horsham, who had already been responsible for laying out the new London Road through Findon, was asked to survey and estimate for the Lancing road.

Construction of the new road began early in January, 1808, even though the authorities had not finally approved the line it took.

Some regarded it as an unhappy omen.

Completed and opened to coast traffic before the end of 1808, within a month the new road had been rendered impassable, the surface broken up by frost.

Unfortunately, some of the old road had been dug up and the materials used in constructing the new road, so for a time both roads were impassable and horse-drawn coaches had to be driven over open fields.

The catalogue of troubles was to last for nearly 90 years.


The troublesome lower road from Worthing to South Lancing, as it passed the Lancing signal station. For more than a century it was called “the most unreliable road in the kingdom”.


The line of the new road was still in dispute when in July, 1809, a special meeting of the Worthing Commissioners was called to revoke the original order authorising the road’s construction.

Only a point of order voiced by Mr Ogle, the owner of Warwick House and a town commissioner, saved the day. The meeting dissolved in chaos but it was reconvened two weeks later, when, to the surprise of many present, the original order for construction of the road was confirmed – nearly a year after its actual completion!

In the next few years, the road was several times washed away by the sea and, in 1822, a new bridge had to be built over the outlet of the Teville Stream at Seamills. Unfortunately, the available finance was inadequate either to protect the road or prevent the land on the north side from being flooded.

Lord Selsey, one of the landowners, warned that if immediate steps were not taken to protect this stretch of the coast, the road itself and much of the adjoining land would not just be damaged but completely washed away.

Another committee was appointed to deal with the problem and they advised that a Turnpike Trust be set up with powers to raise a loan to protect and maintain the road. This would be repaid by levying tolls from traffic using the road. Supported by Worthing Town Commissioners, the Lancing Turpike Act was passed on March 22, 1826.

A second Act was passed a few months later, allowing extension of the turnpike road and the building of a bridge over the River Adur, at what was then called New Shoreham.
This was the Norfolk Suspension Bridge, opened on May 1, 1833, to complete the lower road route through to Brighton.

But the troubles had hardly begun.

Income of the Turnpike Trust was still inadequate to maintain the road and a further Act had to be passed in June, 1841, allowing many of the tolls to be doubled.

In spite of this, the authorities were unable to keep pace with the incursions of the sea and when the railway between Shoreham and Worthing was opened in 1845, traffic along the coast fell to a mere trickle. By 1868, the trust was virtually bankrupt, the groynes had fallen into decay and the road was disappearing piecemeal.

The Worthing Board of Health, the local governing body that succeeded the discredited Board of Commissioners in 1852, refused to build any groynes beyond the Worthing boundary, insisting it was the responsibility of the Commissioners of Sewers for the Rape of Bramber.
They refused to have anything to do with it.

In 1879, a sea breach just beyond the Worthing boundary led to 600 feet of the road being washed away.

The Court of Queen’s Bench maintained the parish of Lancing was not liable for the road’s repair and the newly-created West Sussex County Council decided as it did not have any authority over a road that had ceased to exist, the council could not repair it.


In 1800, the only road connecting Worthing with South Lancing and Shoreham passed through Sompting and North Lancing, seen in this contemporary sketch. Construction of a second road closer to the coastline was completed in 1808. But by January the following year, flooding from the sea had made the latter unusable and traffic had to revert to the upper road


The Gap, as it was called, was to become a notorious feature of the local landscape and for the next 14 years it severed all direct communication between Worthing and Lancing.

It was obvious, however, that this state of affairs could not be allowed to continue. 

Eventually, the county council accepted an amended plan for a new road running 70 yards north of the old road and on  August 16, 1893, the Worthing Gazette proudly announced – as though it was another Relief of Mafeking – that the new road was now open to the public and direct contact between Worthing and Lancing had been restored at last

If you have any old pictures or stories you would like considered for inclusion in Bygones
email us at letters@worthingtoday.co.uk with Bygones in the subject line.

n CONNECTIONS:  The Norfolk suspension bridge over the River Adur was opened in May, 1833, and cut two miles off the journey between Worthing and Shoreham or Brighton. Below left, in 1800, the only road connecting Worthing with South Lancing and Shoreham passed through Sompting and North Lancing, seen in this             contemporary sketch. Construction of a second road closer to the coastline was completed in 1808. But by sJanuary the following year, flooding from the sea had made the latter unusable and traffic had to revert to the upper road. Below right, the troublesome lower road from Worthing to South Lancing, as it passed the Lancing signal station. For more than a century iit was called “the most unreliable road in the kingdom”.
 
 

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