Littlehampton: the back story

About Littlehampton: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Brighton Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Littlehampton grew up at the mouth of the River Arun: a port since Roman times, named in the Domesday Book, given a fort in 1854 and a railway in 1863. In the twenty-first century a café by Thomas Heatherwick and Britain’s longest bench brought it new fame.

Littlehampton is about fifty minutes west of Brighton by train, where the River Arun runs out to sea between two very different beaches: the long sands and promenade of East Beach, and the wild dunes of West Beach. Arundel and its castle lie a few miles upstream. The town has always looked to its river.

A port on the Arun

There has been a port on the Arun since Roman times. The Domesday Book of 1086 records the place as Hantone, and it is thought that “Little” was added later to tell it apart from Southampton. For centuries ships carried goods up and down the river to Arundel; the harbour has handled fishing, shipbuilding and cargoes of aggregates and Baltic timber. The arrival of the railway in 1863 made Littlehampton the main port of the river, and in 1927 an Act of Parliament created the Littlehampton Harbour Board, which still runs the harbour.

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

Guarding the harbour

In 1759 a gun battery for seven guns was built on the east side of the harbour mouth; its mound can still be seen in what is now Harbour Park. In 1854 a new fort was finished on the west bank, armed with three 68-pounder and two 32-pounder guns, with a novel loopholed “Carnot wall” in its ditch. Lessons learned there shaped the fort at Shoreham three years later. Littlehampton Fort was soon outdated, and today its brick walls lie half buried in the dunes of West Beach.

Bridging the river

For generations the only way across the river in town was a ferry. In May 1908 a swing bridge opened for vehicles and foot passengers. It was replaced in 1973 by a retractable footbridge, known to everyone as the Red Bridge, which still links the town with West Beach.

A seafront reborn

In 2007 East Beach gained one of the most talked-about small buildings in Britain: the East Beach Cafe, designed by Thomas Heatherwick’s studio, its shell made of long, rippling ribbons of raw steel. Three years later Studio Weave completed the Longest Bench, 324 metres of reclaimed hardwood that seats more than 300 people along the promenade, funded in part by a private donation in tribute to Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, which is based in the town.

Littlehampton today

Littlehampton is a working harbour and a family seaside town in one. The riverside has fishing boats, crabbing and the museum in the eighteenth-century Manor House; the seafront has Harbour Park, the Windmill cinema, Norfolk Gardens and Mewsbrook Park, joined by a volunteer-run miniature railway; and West Beach, a local nature reserve, keeps one of only two sand dune systems in West Sussex.

Our advice: arrive by train, walk down the river to the harbour mouth, cross the Red Bridge to West Beach for the dunes and the fort, then come back for lunch at the East Beach Cafe and a sit on the Longest Bench.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Littlehampton: the back story before you go.