Adur Unwrapped: Celebrating Our Creative Heritage
September 8-15 2023
Shoreham Wordfest has contributed to the programme of events for Adur’s Heritage Open Days with an information trail to celebrate creative people from the past who lived in, or were inspired by the landscape and culture of Adur District.
The trail of 20 information boards and banners will be on display from 8 – 15 September 2023 as part of a full programme of events, organised in partnership with Shoreham Society and Marlipins Museum.
Here is the list of venues:
Lancing Parish Hall, Waterside Pub on Shoreham Beach, Coronation Green Shoreham, Marlipins Museum, The Shoreham Centre, Southwick Green and Southwick Community Centre
Information about the 20 Creatives, and where they are displayed are below.
For full details of the Heritage Open Days events please go to: Shoreham Society Events
List of Artists - please click on an artist's name to take you to their section
Location :Lancing Parish Hall | Location :Lancing Parish Hall | Location :Lancing Parish Hall | Location : Waterside Pub, Shoreham Beach |
Location : Waterside Pub, Shoreham Beach | Location : Waterside Pub, Shoreham Beach | Location : Waterside Pub, Shoreham Beach | Location : Coronation Green, Shoreham |
Location : Coronation Green, Shoreham | Location : Coronation Green, Shoreham | Location : Coronation Green, Shoreham | Location : Marlipins Museum |
Location : Shoreham Community Centre | Location : Shoreham Community Centre | Location : Southwick Green | Location : Southwick Green |
Location : Southwick Green | Location : Southwick Green | Location : Southwick Community Centre | Location : Southwick Community Centre |
Author 1820 / Location : Lancing Parish Hall
Anna Sewell was born 1820 in Great Yarmouth Anna was home schooled until the age of twelve, when the family moved to Stoke Newington in London.
After two years in London, Anna badly sprained both ankles when she slipped, while walking home from school. Her father moved the family to Brighton, in 1836, hoping the sea air would be beneficial.
In 1845, they made a short move west along the coast to Lancing. The damage to Anna’s ankles left her permanently unable to walk more than short distances. Reliant on horse-drawn carriages, her love of the animals and concern for their welfare, grew from this point. Driving her own beloved pony and trap, Anna would leave her Lancing home daily to collect a newspaper from Shoreham and take her father to and from Shoreham station. A gifted artist, Anna loved the natural world and took every opportunity to sketch in the West Sussex countryside.
Also in 1845, the year Anna Sewell’s family moved to Lancing, a famously beautiful horse was being kept in the area of Lancing Park near the Three Horseshoes public house. It is rumoured that Anna’s knowledge and admiration of this horse made it the inspiration behind Anna’s first and only novel, ‘Black Beauty’
Black Beauty was published in 1877 and by 1894 had sold over 100,000 copies. It became established as a children’s classic book and has been adapted many times for both film and TV.
Judy Upton www.judyupton.co.uk
Writer and adventurer / Location : Lancing Parish Hall
A famous Sompting resident who led an exciting life is Edward John Trelawny.
Born into a Cornish family with a strong military and seafaring tradition, in 1792, Edward Trelawny was only thirteen years old when he joined the British navy.
Setting sail on his first ship, he arrived at Trafalgar only a few weeks after Nelson’s famous battle. Trelawny did not return to England until he was twenty-one. He described his seafaring years in his book ‘Adventures Of A Younger Son,’ published in 1831.
When Trelawny was twenty-seven he travelled to Italy to meet the Sussex born poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. He also became friends with the poet Lord Byron and travelled to Greece with him. In 1858 Trelawny published ‘Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author’. His associations with the Romantic Poets as they were known made him part of London’s literary scene, he joined the Reform Club and moved in artistic circles.
For the last years of Trelawny’s life he opted to live in more tranquil rural surroundings, moving to Sompting at the age of seventy-seven. Here he wrote his autobiography and tended his garden. From a balcony at the front of his house he could see the sea and regularly drove himself down to it to go for a swim.
When Trelawny died aged 89 in 1881 his ashes were laid to rest besides those of his friend Percy Shelley.
Judy Upton www.judyupton.co.uk
Poet – Lancing / Location : Lancing Parish Hall
The poet, playwright and novelist and Algernon Charles Swinburne was born in 1837, at Grosvenor Place, London. He spent much of his childhood on the Isle of Wight. It was here that he acquired his lifelong love of the sea, which he mentioned many times in his poetry, including his verses about Shoreham-by-Sea.
He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford where his social circle included.
Gabriel Dante Rossetti and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, As well as poetry Swinburne produced two novels and was a prolific letter writer.
Swinburne stayed in Lancing during the 1880s. While here, he famously immortalised Shoreham-by-Sea in his poem ‘On The South Coast’ Upon first arriving in Shoreham, Swinburne described it as ‘one of the quaintest and strangest places I ever saw’. He also mentioned that Shoreham had one long street winding through it. In his letters he recalled how ‘like a boy parted from his home’ he longed to visit the town again.
‘Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Shoreham, crowned with the greatest of years; Shoreham, clad with the sunset, glad and grave with glory that death reveres’ is the most quoted line from his poem ‘Upon The South Coast’.
Shoreham was at this time a popular place for visitors who were looking for picturesque views and Swinburne’s poem, while not elevating the area to the same tourist status Wordsworth gave the Lake District, did ensure a steady stream of sight-seers at the end of the 19th century.
Judy Upton www.judyupton.co.uk
Cartographer, inventor of The London A-Z / Location : Waterside Pub, Shoreham Beach
One night in 1935, Phyllis Pearsall, at the age of twenty-nine became lost on her way to a party in London’s Belgravia. Struggling to hold a large map in the wind and rain she decided to design her own guidebook of maps to London. ‘The London A- Z’ was born.
Phyllis Pearsall was born in 1906, in Dulwich, London. As a child she even had a baby elephant as a pet. Her father was a mapmaker and she attended Roedean.
School near Brighton until 1920, when he became bankrupt. A talented artist, in her teens Phyllis Pearsall supported herself by teaching, painting and writing for a newspaper. She also studied philosophy at the Sorbonne.
In 1935, Phyllis Pearsall returned to London. Creating the A-Z was a huge undertaking, as every road had to be mapped by hand. It’s estimated she walked 3,000 miles to map the 23,000 streets of 1930s London. Nearing the end she realised she’d left out Trafalgar Square!
When Phyllis Pearsall approached publishers with her ‘The A-Z Atlas and Guide to London and Suburbs’ they all rejected it, so she self published it, printing an initial 10,000 copies. She did all the design work and proof reading herself. The newsagent chain WH Smith was her first buyer and she delivered its copies by wheelbarrow. Soon the London A-Z was a best selling book.
In her later years, Phyllis Pearsall moved to Shoreham-by-Sea and in the 1960s made many oil paintings of Shoreham Beach.
Judy Upton www.judyupton.co.uk
Film star – Shoreham Beach studios / Location : Waterside Pub, Shoreham Beach
Shoreham Beach played a pioneering role in the development of the film industry. In 1914 Francis Lyndhurst formed the Sunny South Film Company with comedians Will Evans, George Graves and Arthur Conquest. In their first year they made four films ‘Building A Chicken House’, ‘The Jockey’, ‘Harnessing A Horse’ and ‘The Showman’s Dream’. In 1915, Francis Lyndhurst had a glasshouse studio built on a site close to The Church Of The Good Shepherd.
The Progress Film Company took over the site in 1919 and up to 1922, made a total of seventeen films there. Sidney Morgan also gave Shoreham its first film star, his daughter Joan Morgan.
Joan Morgan was only in her mid-teens when she began starring in her father’s films at Shoreham, though she had previously been a child actress. She can be seen in ‘A Lowland Cinderella’ (made in 1921) which was shot around Steyning and is still sometimes shown locally today. She also took the lead in a silent version of ‘Dickens’ ‘Little Dorrit’ and starred in thirty plus movies including: ‘The Children Of Gideon’, ‘Sweet and Twenty’, ‘Two Little Wooden Shoes’, ‘Lady Noggs’ ‘The Scarlet Wooing’, ‘The Lilac Sunbonnet’ and ‘Fires Of Innocence’.
In the 1920s, silent films were also beginning to be made in Hollywood. Joan Morgan was offered a contract by a studio there but stayed in the UK on her father’s wishes. From 1929 Joan Morgan switched to writing novels and film and TV scripts.
Judy Upton www.judyupton.co.uk
Music Hall Artiste / Location : Waterside Pub, Shoreham Beach
In 1900, Marie Loftus visited Shoreham Beach, while performing in Brighton as a music hall star. Having taken the ferry to the quiet, unspoilt strip of land, she became the first of numerous stars of stage and screen to build a holiday home on Shoreham Beach, beginning what was to be known as Bungalow Town.
Marie Loftus had been born in Glasgow in 1857 and lived near the Scotia Music Hall,
where as a young girl she first took to the stage. Aged twenty, Marie made the move to
London to sing and dance in a show at the Oxford Theatre. Her rise to stardom had begun and soon she was receiving top billing as ‘The Sarah Bernhardt of the Music Halls’ and was regularly touring to South Africa and the USA.
Marie Loftus’s first bungalow was at 150 Old Fort Road and named ‘Cecilia’ after her daughter Cissie, who would stay there with her during the school holidays. Soon many other stage stars had followed Marie Loftus to Shoreham Beach and in the years before the Second World War it became a thriving artistes’ colony. Among other stars of the time who lived there were Eddie Gray, Will Evans and Florrie Forde. In 1914, Marie Loftus moved to a new, larger home on the southern side of Old Fort Road. This house was named ‘Pavlova’ after the famous ballet dancer Anna Pavlova.
Judy Upton www.judyupton.co.uk
Actor and Film Director / Location : Waterside Pub, Shoreham Beach
Ida Lupino was only a young child when she lived on Shoreham beach. She was the daughter of music hall comedian Stanley Lupino whose family owned a home in ‘Bungalow Town’ – the beach’s famous theatrical colony.
Ida’s uncle was song and dance man Lupino Lane and he helped her move into the film industry as an actor. She attended RADA and was dubbed ‘The English Jean Harlow’ but was more interested in becoming a writer. Ida Lupino contracted polio in the 1930s but
recovered and continued her career. Although a successful film actor, working alongside
stars such as Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino was often suspended by Warner Bros as she objected to the quality of some of the roles she was expected to take.
In 1948 with her husband Collier Young, Ida Lupino set up her own film company to make realistic films that tackled social issues of the time. She directed six of these films and wrote or co-wrote five of them, often focusing on issues concerning women. Her best-known film ‘The Hitch-Hiker,’ made in 1953, is the only film noir of the time with a female director.
From the mid 1950s, Ida Lupino began directing for TV. There she became the only woman to direct an episode of the famous series ‘The Twilight Zone’. She also continued her successful acting career into the 1970s. Admired by director Marin Scorsese, Ida Lupino had two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to film and TV.
Judy Upton www.judyupton.co.uk
Novelist and poet – Shoreham Camp WW1 novel published 1920 / Location : Coronation Green, Shoreham
Born in London in April 1884, writer Gilbert Frankau’s father was a prosperous cigar merchant and his mother a novelist who wrote under the male name Frank Danby.
At the outbreak of the 1st World War, Gilbert Frankau enlisted and became a commissioned officer in the 9th East Surrey
Rifles. He was sent to Shoreham Camp, on Slonk Hill, just above the Upper Shoreham Road. It was an experience he vividly and accurately recreated in the life of his fictional character Peter Jackson in his novel ‘Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant’ published in 1920.
Life at the Shoreham camp did not go smoothly for Gilbert Frankau. He disagreed with an officer and was transferred out – something he depicts in his novel, alongside observations about the chaos, confusion and lack of equipment the men faced in their bell-tented hillside encampment that winter. Several rifles had to be borrowed from Lancing College and heavy rain in November 1914 turned the site into a quagmire. Residents of Shoreham opened up their homes as billets for the soldiers while proper huts were built on the site.
Later there is a historically fascinating passage in the book describing the arrival of the army horses at Shoreham by train. When the division finally left Shoreham in June 1915, on their way to the front, again Gilbert Frankau preserves this scene for us in his novel. The novel continues, documenting Gilbert Frankau’s experiences on the battlefields of the First World War.
Tightrope walker – Shoreham Swiss Gardens 1883 / Location : Coronation Green, Shoreham
Carlos Trower was a tightrope walker who was also known as ‘The Black Blondin’. He is known to have performed on July 7th and 14th 1883 at Shoreham’s Swiss Gardens, in Old Shoreham Road.
Carlos Trower was born in New York and his first documented performance was with Circus Dundee in Scotland in 1862. He saw
himself as a rival to the famed French tight rope walker, Blondin, and intended trying his luck across Europe, hoping to outdo the daring Frenchman.
At Beverley in April,1869, Carlos Trower was seriously injured when the high rope he was performing on snapped. A newspaper report from later that year reported him recovered and playing the Theatre Royal, Hartlepool, running backwards upon the rope from the stage to the top of the gallery.
After appearing before 50,000 people at Leek in 1878, Carlos Trower sailed to America, performing onboard ship, walking a rope tied mast to mast. In New York he performed on Emancipation Day and was driven away after his act by his own carriage and horses. The next year he returned to England, drawing crowds at Crystal Palace. He is known to have applied for permission to cross the Thames from St. Thomas’s hospital to the House of Commons. It is not known if it was granted.
For Carlos Trowers’ 1883 performances at the Swiss Gardens, it’s believed his walked a tightrope across the lake, which was at that time much larger in size than it is now.
Playwright / Location : Coronation Green, Shoreham
Playwright and screenwriter Constance Cox was born on the 25th October 1912, in Sutton, Surrey. Her first costume drama was staged by a local Women’s Institute when she was only sixteen. During the Second World War, she was a sub-postmistress at Shoreham, working at the Old Shoreham post office in Upper Shoreham Road. It was while working there that she won a playwriting competition run by the Daily Mirror in 1939, with a play called ‘Corinthian,’ set in Regency England.
Her first play to be produced was ‘The Fool of Love’ in 1941 and the next ‘David Garrick’ was a West End success. Sadly a week after the play was accepted for production in 1942, Constance’s husband Norman Cox, a fighter pilot, was killed in the war. Constance Cox’s next classic novel adaptation was ‘Vanity Fair’ and its success enabled her to take up writing full time. Her most famous play, in both stage and radio versions is ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’.
In the 1950s and 60s, Constance Cox started writing for the new medium of television drama. Her adaptations regularly filled BBC Television’s Sunday Classic Serial slot and in 1964 her adaptation of Dickens’s ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ won her the TV and Screenwriters Award. She also had success with radio plays and stage musicals. From 1940 onwards Constance Cox was a member of Sussex Playwrights Club, serving for many years on its committee. The club still meets in Brighton today.
Actor / Location : Coronation Green, Shoreham
A striking grave in the churchyard of St. Nicolas in Old Shoreham is that of Lydia Yavorska. To the north of the church, it features the figure of a saint, set in a blue-tiled recess. The inscription describes her as: Princess Bariatinsky, wife of John Pollock.
Born Lidia Borisovna von Hubbenet, in Kiev in 1869, Lydia Yavorska studied in Paris and was fluent in French and English. In 1896 she married Prince Vladimir Bariatinsky, taking the title of Princess Bariatinsky. She
managed her own theatre in St. Petersburg before the couple moved to London in 1909. Here she was a success on the stages of the West End, where her production of ‘Anna Karenina’ had record breaking run up until the First World War.
Lydia Yavorska campaigned for women to have both the vote and greater rights. In 1911, in the week of King George V’s coronation, the largest demonstration of the suffragette’s campaign, ‘The Coronation Suffrage Pageant’, took place in the centre of London. Its spectacular ‘Pageant of the Actresses’ Franchise League’ was led by Lydia Yavorska riding a horse and dressed as Ibsen’s female character ‘Hedda Gabler’.
During World War 1, Lydia Yavorska raised money to help injured Russian soldiers, but after the Russian Revolution, had to flee the country, settling in Hove. The playwright John Pollock was Princess Bariatinsky’s second husband and the couple married in 1920. Upon her death, only a year later, her funeral at St Nicolas Church in Old Shoreham was attended by hundreds of people.
Architect of Regency Brighton / Location : Marlipins Museum
Amon Henry Wilds was an architect responsible for transforming Brighton into a fashionable Regency-era destination. Some of his majestic buildings survive today and are Grade II listed. His father Amon Wilds Senior was a carpenter who in 1806 founded a father and son architect firm. In 1817, the Wilds were commissioned to design and build the Holy Trinity Chapel in Brighton’s Ship Street and in 1819, the Brighton Unitarian Church. In 1820, the Wilds built Richmond Terrace and Richmond Place as well as the Tamplin’s Brewery and Hanover Crescent.
In 1825, Amon Henry Wilds started work on landscape designer Henry Phillips’s ambitious Anthenaeum Project. A library, museum, school and housing with oriental gardens, would surround a huge steam-heated domed conservatory. The projects costs eventually proved too great with it instead becoming Sillwood Place, Oriental Place, Oriental Terrace and Western Terrace.
A second attempt to build the Anthenaeum greenhouse was made in July 1833, where Palmeira Square now stands. Unfortunately, the greenhouse’s iron frame collapsed. The cause was suspected to have been a design change Wilds had advised against making. Amon Henry Wilds continued to work nationwide, drawing up town plans and road schemes as well as the Clifton Baths at Gravesend, Kent. His largest development was said to be Montpelier Crescent, in Brighton, built in the 1840s.
Amon Henry Wilds moved to Old Shoreham Cottage in Shoreham-by-Sea in 1855. He was buried in St. Nicolas’ churchyard at Old Shoreham.
Novelist / Location : Shoreham Community Centre
George Moore was an Irish novelist who wrote two famous books, one set in Shoreham – ‘Esther Waters,’ and the other ‘Spring Days’ in Southwick. George Moore was born in 1852 in County Mayo, Ireland. He called Sussex his county of instinctive inspiration and it was somewhere he spent much of his writing life.
In 1868, George Moore published ‘Esther Waters,’ a work of fiction featuring below-stairs life at a large country house. He based it on Buckingham House, the home of his
friend Colville Bridger in Old Shoreham. In the novel, servants are mentioned as drinking in the Red Lion pub. Esther Waters, the heroine of the story, is invited to a servants’ ball for hundreds of people. This takes place at the Swiss Gardens in Old Shoreham Road, which at the time was a large pleasure ground with boating lakes.
‘Spring Days’ written in 1886-7 was set entirely in Southwick and provides vivid descriptions of the town at that time. The main action of the novel takes place among the then newly built large houses of Southdown Road, just north of what is now Southwick Square. He also describes the railway station, which at the time was reached by steps, the harbour and houses of Albion Street. The books also gives us a picture of Southwick Green in the Victorian era with its pond, grazing horses and cattle roaming freely and a blackmith and wheelwright based nearby. Brass bands played there on summer Saturdays and the traditional game of Bat and Trap was played.
Sussex Poet / Location : Shoreham Community Centre
The poet Charles Dalmon was born in Old Shoreham in 1872 and spent his boyhood in the county of Sussex, where he was educated at Washington village school. His grandfather William Dalmon lived in Thakeham and West Chiltington and there were claims the family was descended from William Damon, who was the favourite lute-player of Elizabeth I. Charles Dalmon also possessed Romany blood, which he wrote about in his verses, ‘Romany Songs’ These songs are contained in a volume of verse entitled ‘A Poor Man’s Riches’ which celebrated the countryside and wildlife of Sussex.
Many of Charles Dalmon’s verses praising his home county were published in Sussex County Magazine. He moved to London to seek his place in the literary scene but had to take a position in the library of the Post Office to make ends meet. While working there, he completed his book of verse, ‘Minutiae’ and three years later ‘Song Favours’ was published, followed by 1900’s ‘Flower and Leaf’.
It would be another twenty years before Charles Dalmon published ‘A Poor Man’s Riches’ which he dedicated to Chanctonbury. The book is full of verses that describe the sights of the Sussex Downland and another book ‘A Sussex Call Note’ details the many local things he loved including cider, custard pies and jellied quince. Later he revisited his favourite spot Chanctonbury in two verses including ‘To a Skylark Singing above Chanctonbury’. His poems evoke an old rural Sussex, its people and its wildlife, and celebrate its joy.
In a biography by George Cockman he was heralded as “The Forgotten Poet Laureate of Sussex”
Film Pioneer / Location : Southwick Green
George Albert Smith, one of the most important figures in British cinema history, lived in Southwick’s Roman Crescent. Born in London in 1864, he worked as a stage hypnotist in Brighton. In 1892, he bought St. Ann’s Well Garden in Hove and ran a pleasure garden there with lawn tennis, glasshouses and a fortune-teller.
Visiting London, George Smith watched the Lumière brothers demonstrate their pioneering filmmaking techniques at the
Leicester Square Empire theatre. He then held his own exhibition at St. Ann’s Well Garden using a powerful magic lantern: an early form of slide projector, to show a series of dissolving views
In 1896 George Smith bought a film camera and began building his own film processing works. He joined the Warwick Trading Company of Charles Urban and the two became filmmaking collaborators. Most of Smith’s early short works were shot around St. Ann’s Well Garden.
Charles Urban bought the rights to a two-colour process known as Kinemacolor. Smith used it to make films, sometimes staring his wife, actor Laura Bayley. He was responsible for nearly all of the work on the productions. His first public screenings took place twice daily at Brighton Aquarium.
In 1905, George Smith built his Southwick home, complete with a ‘Laboratory Lodge’ to work in. With Urban he then shot the first colour motion picture. This was screened to the press at London’s Wardour Street. The response was phenomenal and the two men went on to demonstrate their colour film in Paris and New York.
Born in Trinidad in 1901, Cyril Lionel Robert James was a historian, political activist and writer, who sometimes used the pen name J. R. Johnson. James was a pioneering voice in postcolonial literature and his novel ‘Minty Alley,’ written in the late 1920s, was the first novel by a black West Indian man to be published in Britain. Reviews praised its sensitive portrayals of black working class characters, particularly women and their struggles to make ends meet.
As a child James distinguished himself as an athlete and he became a club cricketer in Port of Spain. In the 1920s, while teaching English and history, he had success as a writer of short stories. C.L.R. James became a cricket correspondent on the Manchester Guardian in the 1930s, before moving to London. His 1936 stage play ‘Toussaint Louverture, The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History’ was produced in London’s West End in 1936, staring Hollywood’s Paul Robeson, the black actor and activist. James followed it up with ‘The Black Jacobins’ about the Haitian Revolution
C.L.R James was heavily involved with politics, writing non-fiction work about both the Bolsheviks and the Haitian revolutions. He travelled to America and met Trotsky on a trip to Mexico and also the artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
In 1937 C.L.R. James lived at Old Shoreham Road, Southwick, as a letter intercepted by Special Branch at the time has recently conformed. Politically a socialist, they had been keeping following his movements. A blue plaque dedicated to C.L.R James was unveiled at his Southwick address in March 2023
Opera Singer / Location : Southwick Green
One of Southwick’s most famous residents was Dame Clara Butt. Born in Southwick on February 1st 1872, she was the daughter of Captain Henry Butt, an oyster trawler man and his wife Clara Hook. Both her parents were amateur singers and encouraged her to develop her deep, powerful voice.
When the family moved to Bristol, Clara Butt trained professionally and her voice being towards the lower end of the scale soon had her singing Contralto parts. At six feet two
When the family moved to Bristol, Clara Butt trained professionally and her voice being towards the lower end of the scale soon had her singing Contralto parts. At six feet two inches she was a dramatic presence on stage.
Clara Butt was accepted for the Royal College of Music in London and by 1892 she was singing in productions at the Albert Hall – aged only 20. She often sang before royalty and Queen Victoria is quoted as saying, “I have never liked the English language before, but in your mouth it is beautiful.”
In the early 20th century, the composer Edward Elgar first wrote his ‘Sea Pictures’ song cycle for Clara Butt. He then added words to the ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ march itself, creating ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’ especially for her. Thomas Beecham was quoted as saying that her rousing voice could be heard across the English Channel.
With the onset of the First World War, Clara Butt staged concerts for the Red Cross raising £100,000. In 1920, for her wartime work, King George V. made her a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Although her old home at 27 Adur Terrace has been long been demolished, her recordings are still enjoyed today.
Poet / Location : Southwick Green
John Cooper Powys became a well-known literary figure in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in 1872, he was a descendent of the poet William Cowper.
Powys was brought up in Dorset and Somerset, and attended Cambridge University. He first came to Sussex in 1893, having been offered a teaching appointment at a Brighton girls’ school. Needing to find somewhere to stay he walked along the seafront as far as Southwick. He chose to lodge there because, as he later recalled ‘it reminded me of home.’
Powys was able to find rooms above Mr Pollard’s grocer’s shop in Albion Street, which at that time was Southwick’s main shopping street as well as being the coast road. His Southwick lodgings cost £1 a week and included a back bedroom and a room with a bow window that had a view across the harbour. In his recollections he mentioned the room smelt of sardines.
Powys wrote a poem about his time in Southwick and admitted that ‘the poignant magic of spring’ in Southwick affected him more than in any other place. While living there, Powys taught at several schools in Brighton and Hove.
Powys’s first published works were poems published in 1896 and 1899. ‘Wood and Stone’ his first novel, was published in 1915, to be followed by ‘Rodmoor’ the next year. A third novel ‘After My Fashion’ was set in Sussex. Like Thomas Hardy, rural landscapes played an important part in his novels. In his works, John Cooper Powys often criticised cruelty to animals. He was opposed to fox hunting and was a vegetarian.
Opera Singer / Location : Southwick Community Centre
Born in Derby in 1897, Marjorie Eyre’s real surname was Eyre-Parker. She was an English opera singer and actress who lived in Southwick. She is best remembered today for performances in the Savoy Operas for the famous D’Oyly Carte Company.
Marjorie Eyre studied at the Royal College Of Music and then became a soprano chorister. From 1924 she worked for the D’Oyly Carte Repertory Opera Company appearing in a number of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operettas. By 1928 she was regularly playing principal soprano roles for the company. Later, as her voice matured she switched to singing Mezzo-soprano roles.
It was while singing for D’Oyly Carte that Marjorie Eyre met and married Chichester born principal baritone Leslie Rands in 1926. Marjorie Eyre toured North America with the opera company where the parts that now came her way as a singer included Hebe in ‘HMS Pinafore’, Edith in ‘The Pirates Of Penzance’ and the title role in ‘Iolanthe’. She appears on two D’Oyly Carte Company recordings from this time – ‘Patience’, recorded in 1930, and ‘The Mikado’ (1936).
Marjorie Eyre toured Australia and New Zealand singing Gilbert and Sullivan roles. In 1952 she appeared alongside Leslie Rands in ‘Merrie England’ at Priory Park, Chichester. The couple settled first in the Sussex countryside and then at Albany Villas, Hove. In 1963 they moved to Glebe Villas in Southwick. Marjorie Eyre was for many years the vice-president of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. She died in Brighton 1987 aged 90.
Artist / Location : Southwick Community Centre
Born in Southwick, on the 5th July 1884, Thérèse Elaine Lessore was a celebrated English artist who worked in both oil and watercolour. Her French grandfather and father were established artists in Paris. Then her father moved to Eastbourne, married and set up home in Southwick. Thérèse Lessore was a founder member of the London Group, and the third wife of the painter Walter Sickert. One of three talented artist siblings, her brother Frederick was a sculptor and sister Ada Louise an artist and designer, who worked extensively for the Wedgewood Pottery.
Thérèse Lessore became a painter, and while studying at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1904 to 1909, she won the Melvill Nettleship Prize for Figure Composition. She married the painter Bernard Adeney in 1909. In 1912 she exhibited her paintings in the Allied Artists Association and in 1913 founded the artists’ commune, The London Group. It wasn’t until 1918 however that she put on her first solo exhibition, which was at the Eldar Gallery in London.
Thérèse Lessore’s work often featured ordinary life and after she married Sickert in 1926, she painted several views of the streets of their new home city of Bath. Her most famous paintings however include one that features Sussex fishermen. Other subjects were people at the circus and theatre, as well as children playing in London parks. Her 1931 exhibition of watercolours received a glowing review from The Times who said she ‘displayed a rare talent happily employed.’ Like her sister, she also created designs for Wedgwood Pottery.
Anna Sewell was born 1820 in Great Yarmouth Anna was home schooled until the age of twelve, when the family moved to Stoke Newington in London.
After two years in London, Anna badly sprained both ankles when she slipped, while walking home from school. Her father moved the family to Brighton, in 1836, hoping the sea air would be beneficial.
In 1845, they made a short move west along the coast to Lancing. The damage to Anna’s ankles left her permanently unable to walk more than short distances. Reliant on horse-drawn carriages, her love of the animals and concern for their welfare, grew from this point. Driving her own beloved pony and trap, Anna would leave her Lancing home daily to collect a newspaper from Shoreham and take her father to and from Shoreham station. A gifted artist, Anna loved the natural world and took every opportunity to sketch in the West Sussex countryside.
Also in 1845, the year Anna Sewell’s family moved to Lancing, a famously beautiful horse was being kept in the area of Lancing Park near the Three Horseshoes public house. It is rumoured that Anna’s knowledge and admiration of this horse made it the inspiration behind Anna’s first and only novel, ‘Black Beauty’Black Beauty was published in 1877 and by 1894 had sold over 100,000 copies. It became established as a children’s classic book and has been adapted many times for both film and TV.
Judy Upton www.judyupton.co.uk
