THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE - The Nearby Worthing Stench

I have been to Worthing during some summers in the past when the stench has been really obnoxious and pervading the buildings on the front. I have had to leave and not continue with my shopping. The reeking mass of great swathes of slimy seaweedy-coated shore was so bad that it quite put me off going to Worthing. In fact, the stink has penetrated this stretch of the south coast for at least the last two hundred years, if not more.

The seaweed just four miles to the south of us has always been a struggle between men and sea. I understand the problem starts with the nature of the seabed off the nearby coast. This seems to provide an ideal situation for certain kinds of seaweed. The offending seaweed beds are often ripped up by summer storms and detached by the winds and tide and are then deposited on the beach by the prevailing Atlantic currents. On the good side, the seaweed is a rich source of nitrates, and thus makes good fertilizer. Thus the town became known as Wort (weed) inge (people). Seems a logical enough explanation to me.

Worthing has suffered from evil smells on the beach back in the 1700s and beyond and by 1841 the Town Council of the day authorised expenditure ....

"for the purchase of a rake for seaweed clearance".

Back in 1836, a horse race was organised to take place on the shore. Great difficulty was encountered when endeavouring to set out the course due to the masses of seaweed discarded on the sand at low tide. Can you imagine horseracing with stands for spectators, betting booths and refreshment tents on the Worthing Sands?

"What sands?" I guess you are saying.

The sand at Worthing was so firm in the past that at low tide the gentry drove their carriages pulled by horses, to the very edge of the sea.

By 1850, the General Board of Health reported that ...

"The smell of seaweed when it piles up is nothing like as bad as the smell of the sand at the end of the troughs which carry the town's drainage to the sea".

In the 1800s, the seaweed strewn over the shore was inextricably mixed with the town's sewage ditches. These were emptied to the sea via eight troughs (constructed of wood) passing under the seafront parade direct to the shore just below the high-tide mark.

In 1857 a doctor is reputed to have recalled ―

"There are some now living in Worthing, who remember it a small fishing village. As the population increased, however, the drainage based on cesspools, proved defective. These poured their fluid contents by several trunks (wooden troughs) on the shore, a short distance from the beautiful esplanade, which, especially at the ebb of the tide, could no longer be resorted to (due to the foul stench of sewage on the sands)".

Even as late as 1876 a guide to Worthing referred to ―

"evil smells on the front".

There came a time when local farmers from Findon, High Salvington, Patching and Clapham and elsewhere were actually encouraged to cart the seaweed away as a free fertiliser for their fields for the growing of crops. A later money-grabbing administration saw it as a golden opportunity to make extra revenue and began charging 12.6d. per load. Roger Moulds an ex-Findonian (now residing in Llandrindod Wells in Wales) has emailed me to say ―

"Certainly seaweed used to be collected for free from the beach by the myriad of market gardeners in the locality, but my grandfather told me that Worthing Borough Council placed a charge on it and that put an end to it and Worthing returned to its smelly, fly-blown days."    Thus the Findon farmers retaliated by saying it was uneconomical and they ceased bringing the fertiliser inland to their fields.

In 1897 a row developed over the decline of the sand.   Every day horse-drawn carts descended on the beach to take away tons of the sand for the building trade.   The business of sand collecting became so remorseless that some wagons are said to have departed empty because the shore was denuded of sand.

In 1907 in response to many complaints about rotting seaweed on the shore, Worthing's Alderman Captain Cortis thought it might be turned into a visitors’ attraction and remarked that if the council advertised the pong, no doubt trippers would come down to smell it.   Yes, a rather strange idea to be sure.

Back in 1908 the local seaweed was under discussion and a commentator of the day noted:

“There are those who are mortally alarmed at the least suggestion of a deposit of seaweed on the beach, declaring that the odour that emanates from such accumulations from the harvest of the sea is warranted to kill at a thousand yards”.

A year later in 1909, a local correspondent wrote ...

"Having known Worthing for over 40 years, first as a visitor and for the last 15 years as a resident, I have, with many others, noticed with much sadness the decrease of sand and the increase of sloppy puddles on our seafront year by year. Can this be wondered at when we consider that thousands and thousands of cartloads of sand have been removed during so many years. The wonder is that there is any sand left".

In 1926 a resident complained in the newspaper about the seaweed and stated "The abominable stench is driving visitors and would-be residents alike out of town".

A London newspaper columnist, Jane Doe, wrote in 1928 that nearby Worthing's seaweed strewn shore as...

"It smells fine, but I think, I should like it strained before I bathe in it."

The photograph at the top of this page, shows the shore in 1936. The horses and carts were busy at work on the beach at regular intervals and were laboriously transporting seaweed out to sea at low tide — unfortunately it was dragged back onto the beach during the next rough spell of weather.... and they had to start all over again.

Even after the Second World War, sewage was still being discharged into the sea too close to the beach and amongst the piles of stinking rotting seaweed. The Council responded by hiring some bulldozers and shoving the offending weed back whence it came..... to only find that it had sneaked in again on the next in-coming tide.

In 1948 it was suggested that Worthing's abundant seaweed could be turned into something useful...... would you believe blancmange........jelly ....and yes, cough mixture. The weed was duly infused with sugar, cocoa and vanilla essence and the resultant "blancmange" was tested. The verdict (it is alleged) was tasted and declared delicious.... without even a tiny hint of salt. I wonder why it did not take off as a by-product of Worthing?

At least there was no mess left on the beach in the 1950s by this elephant...

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On the beach in the 1950s

Pam Stepney of Findon emailed in November 2006 to say that as a child she witnessed a mechanical elephant in the Denton Gardens at nearby Worthing. Her husband, John, found the above photograph — which she says looks very similar to her elephant of years ago. Perhaps it did a tour of the seaside resorts?

The ensuing long hot summers of the 1950s and 1960s proved irresistible to the local kelp fly on the huge piles of seaweed. The Council even went to the expense of hiring helicopters this time to spray the offending seaweed-based breeding ground with insecticide. It did kill off the flies — but obviously did not stop the seaweed invasion.

Here is a very novel unusual idea that was put forward in 1952. The chairman of the Town Council's Entertainments Committee, Councillor W. W. Spendlow, suggested the building of a large concrete basin on the nearby shore at Worthing to provide improved swimming facilities for all. I guess he was thinking of the tourists. This he said would be replenished daily by the tide .... but….

To have to walk over very rough shingle and, when you get to the water, to find yourself covered with seaweed, is not good enough".

In October 2008 I received an email from Andrew Miles now living in Ontario in Canada....

Hi Valerie..... Seaweed....I remember the seaweed on Worthing's seafront very well.

As boys, we used to go swimming on hot days to cool off.

Often there would be mounds of rotting seaweed, sometimes two or three feet deep, blocking our path to the water's edge. Baking under the hot sun the topmost layers of seaweed would dry out and form a crust, inhabited by millions of flies. We used to try walking over this crust, which invariably caved in under our feet leaving us rather stuck. The sensation of having our bare legs covered in slimy, smelly seaweed was very unpleasant, but somehow, bizarrely, we thought it was also great fun.

click to enlarge

Here's a photo I found, taken in 1956, showing workmen trying to clear the beaches of seaweed near the pier. I wonder where they dumped it all - farmer's fields perhaps? All the best, Andrew."

I love the old lorries, they look like toy ones compared to today's. I wonder if they transported the seaweed upcountry to Findon to put on the agricultural land as fertiliser? The gales on Sunday 29th July 1956 were the worst in living memory. The gusts were reported as being hurricane force.

Doug Attrell of Goring-by-Sea emailed.....

"On the subject of the seaweed in Andrew's photo; As a resident of Lancing at the time I can tell you what they did with it. They dumped it on Lancing beach, that's what. The idea was that it would then be dispersed on the tides. Bloomin' cheek! We were not amused.

We don't seem to get so much these days. I read somewhere that this is due to the common practice of "pair trawling" destroying the kelp beds off Bognor Regis where the seaweed originates from. This also destroys the habitat of a multitude of sea creatures. I've recently seen pairs of French trawlers operating from Shoreham Harbour. Meanwhile, our local fishermen are strictly limited in what they're allowed to catch. Something wrong somewhere don't you think?

I'd better get off my soapbox now."

The Worthing Town Council launched operation Dragnet in 1959. This involved employing trawlers to sweep seaweed clear of a three-mile wide stretch of seabed between Littlehampton and Shoreham. This was another endeavour so the seaweed did not end up on Worthing's beach.

In 1963 at the height of the summer season, the shore was hit by a giant cast of seaweed from which millions of little black flies hatched...... to the consternation of the visitors to the beach.

In 1972, Worthing's annual regatta at Splash Point was utterly ruined by the dreaded seaweed and miserable weather conditions. 1,750 programmes were printed but only 400 sold. Also that year, fishermen were chastised for leaving the beach between the pier and Splash Point strewn with unsightly and rotting fish heads and offal..... all adding to the aroma on the beach.

A storm in 1976 left seaweed waist high on the beach at Worthing.

In 1996 it was estimated that if the beastly seaweed washed up on the shore that year had to be carted away by road, it would have filled 60,000 lorries before the beach was clear.

Continue if you would like to read The Nearby Washington Lime Kilns.