insideSUSSEX Magazine Issue 21 - November 2016 | Page 77

TOWNSPOTLIGHT

S P OT L I G H T

O N

WORTHING

BY LISAMARIE LAMB

Worthing may seem the quintessential seaside town, but look beyond the façade of this
supposedly sleepy place and you’ll soon see why so many people are moving here. Sure,
Worthing has everything you could wish for from a main town – it’s easily accessible by rail,
road and bike, and it has fantastic shopping (including wonderful old-school department stores
such as Beales) – but, the difference between Worthing and many other south coast towns is
that because it’s only just being rediscovered (shhh…don’t tell everyone!), it has a wonderful
feeling of space about it; shopping is not so much a hustle-and-bustle experience, but a gentle
potter interrupted only by glimpses of the sea and the odd waft of coastal air.

History in Brief
It was 60,000 years ago that the area we
now know as Worthing became inhabited.
Stone Age settlers realised that the land was
particularly fertile, so it was perfect for both
mining and farming. Not only that, but due
to its location it was partly protected by the
coast, making it an excellent place to build
a town. Thousands of years of mining later
and Worthing had become one of the most
important flint mines in the country. Strangely,
though, it wasn’t until the 1700s that Worthing
became a tourist destination as well as a
working town. And that was all down to a new
wave of doctors who understood that sea air
was the perfect cure for…well, pretty much
everything.

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