East Beach, the East Beach Cafe and the Longest Bench

About East Beach, the East Beach Cafe and the Longest Bench

By the ULTIMATE Brighton Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

East Beach is Littlehampton’s family seafront: wide greens, a patrolled beach in summer, the East Beach Cafe by Thomas Heatherwick’s studio, completed in 2007, and the Longest Bench, 324 metres long, completed by Studio Weave in 2010.

Few seafronts have been changed so much by two pieces of design. In 2007 a café appeared on East Beach that looked like something washed up by the tide; three years later a bench began to wriggle along the promenade for a third of a kilometre. Together they turned Littlehampton into a place people travel to see.

The East Beach Cafe

Heatherwick Studio designed the café for a long, narrow, exposed strip of land between the promenade and a sewage pipe. Rather than white sails and seaside nostalgia, the studio wanted something closer to the real texture of a British beach: damp shingle, seaweed, driftwood and rope. The answer came from an unlikely place: the roller shutters needed to protect forty metres of windows. The whole building is made of long, undulating ribbons of raw steel the width of shutter boxes, wrapping round to form both roof and walls; the shutters themselves are hidden along the front and appear only at night.

Check opening times and trains on the official sites before you travel.

It is still a café first. It opens every day from 9am for breakfast and lunch, seats up to seventy-five inside, has a takeaway kiosk and beachfront decking, and recommends booking for a table inside.

The Longest Bench

Studio Weave imagined the Longest Bench as a charm bracelet for the town. It runs 324 metres along the promenade, seats more than 300 people, and is made from thousands of hardwood bars reclaimed from old groynes, including Littlehampton’s own, and from landfill, with splashes of colour wherever it bends or dips. It loops round lampposts, ducks into the ground to let you through to the green, and replaces the old shelters with bronze-finished loops. Local schoolchildren helped shape the design, and in 2012 it won a Civic Trust Award.

Along the front

Behind the beach lie the seafront greens, used for picnics, ball games and events; Norfolk Gardens, with crazy golf, tennis and bowls; and Mewsbrook Park, with its boating lake and Art Deco shelters. The volunteer-run Littlehampton Miniature Railway links Norfolk Gardens with Mewsbrook Park, and Harbour Park’s rides stand at the river end of the front.

Practical notes

RNLI lifeguards patrol the beach in summer. Dogs are restricted to the area east of Norfolk Road from 1 May to 30 September. There are three pay-and-display car parks on the seafront.

Our advice: come for breakfast at the café on a bright morning, then walk the whole length of the bench towards Mewsbrook Park and ride the miniature railway back.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with East Beach, the East Beach Cafe and the Longest Bench before you go.