The Sussex Coast - online book

A Literary & Historical travel guide to the Sussex Coast

	IX. Shoreham
	AN extremely picturesque and often-sketched object is Old Shoreham Bridge, a long wooden structure built by Act of Parliament in 1781-2. The cost was £5,000, and this was raised by subscrip­tion, the contributors receiving annuities and the income after their deaths being granted to the Duke of Norfolk. The bridge is now the property of the London, Brighton, and South-Coast Railway, whose line runs close to its eastern end. In the reedy ditches of the flat country to the west, where the tide flows and ebbs, A. E. Knox tells us the reed warbler is fond of building its beautiful nest. On the road here is a public-house called the Sussex Pad Inn, but the name is far more picturesque than the hostelry, which was rebuilt after a fire. Just east of the bridge is Old Shoreham, a great seaport once, now a mere village with a very in­teresting cruciform church. The nave walls are partly Saxon, displaying a very rude round-arched doorway and rough long and short work ; the west part is narrower than the rest on the north side, in 159