SOUTHWICK

Of a number of English towns known as Southwick, this one is situated in the county of West Sussex and lies on the English Channel roughly midway between Brighton and Worthing. What was a small and isolated fishing and market gardening village has grown to become a built-up residential and light industrial area.

The Domesday Book (1085) records that “Nigel holds Esmerwick of William. Azor held it of King Edward. Then, and now, it vouched for one hide and a half. There is land for 4 ploughs. In demesne are 2 ploughs, and 4 villeins and 6 bordars with 2 ploughs. In the time of King Edward it was worth 40 shillings, and afterwards 30 shillings. Now 4 pounds”. A ‘bordar’ was a cottager; ‘villein’ a person in a condition of absolute servitude and ‘demesne’ was an owner’s land not held of him by freehold tenants. The Saxon name for Southwick was Esmerewic – freely translated this could be ‘East Pool Hamlet’. The name Suthewicke was first recorded in 1309. (Other sources attribute Domesday’s Esmerwick to the hamlet of Benfield, and give an alternative translation.)

The parish church of St Michael and All Angels, built of flint with stone dressings, has a chancel, south chapel, aisled nave, and west tower with a broach spire and flanking vestries. The tower, has been said to be Saxon, but most of its fabric is of the 12th century or early 13th. It was built against the older west end of the former nave, which was probably of the 11th century.

King Charles’s Cottage to the west of The Green is so called because the young Charles II, when Prince Charles, is believed to have hidden there after his defeat at Worcester in 1651 shortly before his escape to France.

Southwick has several other famous associations; John Pell was born in the Old Rectory in 1610, he was an M.A. at 20 years, became Cromwell’s Envoy to Switzerland, but is best known for inventing the division sign in mathematics. His brother, Thomas, was a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Charles I and in 1654 bought from the Indians a large area of land which now forms part of New York State. Dame Clara Butt, the internationally acclaimed operatic singer, was born in Southwick in 1872.

A hundred or more years ago Good Friday was known locally as “Long Line Day” (skipping with a long rope) - and the Annual Fair was held on 19th May, St Dunstan’s Day; cattle from surrounding farms were watered at the pond on the South Green. Vestry meetings were sometimes held in the Victory Inn, Commercial Inn, Cricketers Arms or the Schooner – what happy days for local government! One of the most ancient offices in local government was that of High Constable, appointed by the Court Leete; these appointments were made from 1284 to 1842 and Southwick’s last High Constable was a Richard Longhurst who died on 31st October 1865, aged 86 years, and is buried in the churchyard of St Michael’s.

Fifty years earlier the sea was known to break in and come up The Green as far as Church Lane; the Rev Samuel Prosser was so fat that he was taken to church in a cart and had to be pushed up into the pulpit. There were stocks opposite King Charles’s Cottage, a maypole on The Green. There are stories of smuggling, caves, ghosts, tunnels and tales of “catpie” in the old Cricketers public house.

The War Memorial situated at the lower end of The Green commemorates the 190 men of Southwick and Fishersgate who died in the First and Second World Wars.

The growth of the district can be well assessed by reference to statistics which still survive – in 1676 there were “63 conformists, 1 non-conformist and no Papists”. In 1724 22 families lived in the district; in 1801 there were only 34 houses containing 134 males and 137 females and since 1841 the population has grown from 957 to around 12,000 inhabitants.

Southwick’s bustling ‘downtown’ is centred on Southwick Square built on the old Egg Field in the 1960s. Nearby is the Community Centre occupying The Homestead, a Tudor farmhouse; the Manor House now used for offices; and Manor Cottage restored by the Southwick Society as a heritage museum.

© Trevor Hanson 1-Jan-2006 E. & O. E.