Shoreham-by-Sea (often shortened to Shoreham) is a coastal town and port in the Adur district, in the county of West Sussex, England.
Muslim geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi, writing c. 1153, described Shoreham as "a fine and cultivated city containing buildings and flourishing activity".
[6] The rapid growth of the neighbouring towns of Brighton, Hove and Worthing – and in particular the arrival of the railway in 1840 – prepared the way for Shoreham's rise as a Victorian sea port, with several shipyards and an active coasting trade.
However, in early or mid-Saxon times, the people may have re-located down off the hill to Kingston Buci (TQ 235 052), which sits to the east of Shoreham-by-Sea.
The church here was extensively re-modelled in the thirteenth century when the shifting river estuary temporarily made Kingston a port town.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the mouth of the river shifted eastwards which restricted trade to the port; by 1810, it was almost opposite Aldrington church.
Along the Adur mud flats adjacent to Shoreham Beach sits (and at high tides floats) a large collection of houseboats made from converted barges, tugs, mine sweepers,[13][better source needed] and motor torpedo boats.
The Monarch's Way long-distance footpath, commemorating the escape route of Charles II to France after the Battle of Worcester, follows the beach westwards from Hove past Portslade and Southwick, ending by the harbour mouth's east breakwater.
[14] The mudflats support wading birds and gulls, including the ringed plover which attempts to breed on the coastal shingle.
The Adur district has a variety of habitats in a small area, including natural chalk downs and butterfly meadows, freshwater and reed beds, salt marsh and estuary, brackish water lagoons, woodland, shingle seashore, chalk platform undersea, and large expanses of sand.
[17]:209 The town is the end-point of the Monarch's Way, a 615-mile (990 km) long-distance footpath, based on the escape route taken by King Charles II in 1651 after being defeated by Cromwell in the Battle of Worcester.
Despite efforts by volunteers and rangers, the hill still carries far too great an area of dense and simplified scrub, which has flourished at the expense of the biodiverse turf.
Through the vigorous campaigning of activists from ABBA (the Anti-Brighton Bypass Association) the road was re-routed through a tunnel under the Hill rather than a cutting through it.
Here, there are still rabbits playing on the lawns amongst the purging flax, eggs and bacon, squinancywort, eyebright, and wild thyme, which themselves mingle with tall herb patches of parsnip, greater knapweed, ragwort, hogweed, and St John's wort.
Butterflies in the area include common blue, clouded yellow, small heath, comma, red admiral, painted lady, and day-flying moths like treble-bar and dusky sallow.
The tenant farmer continuously grazed the whole Hill and, as a result, it was something of a time capsule from a particular period of Downland history, that of the long agricultural depression from 1876 to 1940, when scrub took over many old pastures and cattle replaced many sheep flocks.
Nevertheless, as a whole the Hill still has a mixture of archaic pasture and scrub thickets, sometimes mature enough to harbour small maiden oaks, and it retains much of the wildlife lost elsewhere on the Brighton Downs.
[23] Erringham Hole (TQ 231 082) is the bushy combe to the east of Thundersbarrow, whose Celtic villagers built the huge field lynchets, parts of which are up to 12 feet in height.
The remaining grassland is only lightly grazed, allowing growth of bramble and thorn and a loss of its ancient down pasture character.
This is the only site in the South Downs that contains the plant saw-wort, which looks like a slimmer version of knapweed, and still blooms profusely in a little glade amongst the gorse.
It has one of only two remaining medieval manorial chapels on the Brighton Downs (the other at Swanborough Manor), which now functions as a front garden shed for one of the modern farm workers cottages just to the south of the old farmhouse.
It is a mixed farm with corn crops, beef cattle, a bit of livery stabling, and hay meadows.
[17]:204 Old Erringham Combe (TQ 205 081) is an old-fashioned mosaic of habitats, making it a great refuge for Downland wildlife.
The south-facing bank is the hottest place, but below it there are willows and a tiny tongue of wet grassland where lesser marsh grasshopper, autumn lady's-tresses orchid, bastard toadflax, rockrose, betony, wild thyme, and other herbs grow.
The rare Carthusian snail (Monacha cartusiana) still exists in this combe, possibly due to centuries of cattle grazing.
It's more open at the northern end facing the combe, where the remains of four big old broken beeches and lots of may blossom make it a good place for insects.
[26]:122 Evening shadows reveal dips and hummocks at the Hill's southern end, although they are probably due to the trench digging of the large army camp that came here during the First World War.
[citation needed] There are three places that were spared the damage of decades of agribusiness on the hill: an island of old Down pasture on the eastern slope, an old bostal track, which winds down the slope at its southern end, and a patch of hillside a few hundred yards north, surrounded by Iron Age field lynchets.
The structure is now too weak to carry vehicles and underwent extensive restoration, then was ceremonially re-opened for pedestrians on 23 October 2008, by Prince Andrew, Duke of York.
On 22 August 2015, a Hawker Hunter jet fighter taking part in the airshow crashed onto the busy A27 road just outside the airport, killing eleven people and injuring several others.