Signs of our times

It is the last substantial area of open countryside left in the borough and the final chance to honour people who, over the past century or so, have put the town on the map.

The Sentinel launches a campaign to ensure that when a number of new roads are created, they are named after local dignitaries who have so far not been remembered.

Paul Holden has drawn up a shortlist of contenders.

ANGELA BARNWELL: In August 1952, 5,000 people gathered outside Worthing Town Hall for a civic reception to celebrate 16-year-old Angela Barnwell's return from the Helsinki Olympics after she reached the final of the women's 100m freestyle.

At 6ft tall, Barnwell was Worthing's most famous sports personality of the day.

Born in January 1936, she went to Broadwater and Davison Schools. She taught herself to swim at the age of ten and in 1950 won the Sussex schoolgirls' 100 yards championships.

One of her trainers, LF Bowley, said: "She was the greatest swimmer Worthing and the county ever had."

Barnwell died in 1965 at a tragically young age.

PATRICIA BARING: Is credited as the woman who saved Worthing's heritage from the bulldozer - or at least some of it.

Mrs Baring set up the Worthing Society conservation group after planners ripped the heart out of the old town in the late 1960s and early 1970s, demolishing historic buildings and replacing them with what are today regarded as concrete monstrosities.

She saved Beach House, a semi-derelict Regency mansion, from bulldozers and stopped West Sussex County Council pulling down a lamppost in Farncombe Road by sitting in a deckchair to stand guard.

Mrs Baring died in September 1982, aged 87.

FRANK Cave: Frank Cave, editor of the Worthing Herald for 36 years during its broadsheet days between 1931 and 1967, founded Worthing Boys' Club.

He was also life president of Worthing Area Guild, and received an MBE in 1974.

He died in May 1992, aged 84.

SAMMY CHAPMAN: After a distinguished career in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, when he cheated death on several occasions, Sammy Chapman rose from licensee of the Montague Inn, Worthing, to Mayor of the town in 1969.

A block of flats in Littlehampton Road, Worthing, was later named after him. He died in 1975, aged 57.

His sons, Chris and David, also made their mark on Worthing.

Chris set up and still runs a chain of pubs, and is credited with putting the "life" into Worthing's nightlife, while David was Mayor in 1998-99.

He caused uproar by switching from the Lib-Dems to the Tory party in mid-office.

ALMA COGAN: Britain's highest-paid singer in the 1960s, Alma Cogan was brought up in Worthing and started her career in the town, singing with a band on the pier.

At 20 she made her first record and a year later her next single, Bell Bottom Blues, sold 100,000 copies.

By 1962, she was estimated to be earning £1,000 a week.

Cogan appeared in two Royal Command performances and was dated by Hollywood stars such as Danny Kaye and Beatle John Lennon, but she underwent stomach surgery in the spring of 1966 and died later the same year.

She was just 33.

WINSTON CHURCHILL: Visited the town on a number of occasions during the Second World War to inspect coastal defences and plan for D-Day with Allied commanders at the Warnes Hotel.

In 1958, Churchill returned to Worthing to watch his daughter, Sarah, perform in Terence Rattingan's play Variation on a Theme at the Connaught Theatre.

Thousands of well-wishers turned out to welcome him before he took up his seat.

Churchill was granted the Freedom of the Borough in 1947 but had to decline the award because he could not spare the time to visit and pick it up.

WILLIAM HUDSON: Renowned countryside author William Henry Hudson lived for several years at a house in Bedford Row, Worthing.

He was born in Argentina in 1841 where his father ran a large cattle ranch. He came to England in 1874 and two years later got married.

In 1899 Hudson came to Sussex and stayed at Seaview, the house in Goring where the naturalist and writer Richard Jefferies had died 12 years earlier.

It was here that Hudson wrote Nature in Downland, leaving some memorable descriptions of Sussex 100 years ago.

Today, Hudson is much admired in Argentina, and his grave at Broadwater Cemetery remains a place of pilgrimage to fans of his writing.

DEREK JAMESON: Former Argus columnist Derek Jameson rose from being a poor East End boy to editing several national newspapers, including the Daily Express, then branching out into TV and radio with the catchphrase Do They Mean Me?

Despite his rise to fame, Jameson never lost the common touch.

When he got married at Arundel Cathedral, Jameson invited the owner of his favourite fish and chip shop, the Tasty Plaice in Rowlands Road, Worthing.

He constantly promotes Worthing as the best seaside town in Britain.

BOB MONKHOUSE: Monkhouse moved to Worthing in 1939 as war with Germany was brewing, his family believing he was safer on the coast than in London.

Bob attended Goring Hall School, now a private hospital, and in his memoirs recalled how he witnessed a dogfight between RAF fighters and a Luftwaffe bomber, which resulted in the latter crashing.

He visited the Dome cinema and enjoyed cycling around Goring, then far more rural than it is today.

JOHN OLLIVER: One of the most eccentric figures in the history of Sussex smuggling was John Olliver, miller of Highdown.

Despite outward respectability, Olliver was almost certainly an important person in the "free trade" business.

It is even said that his windmill, overlooking Worthing, was used to signal vessels carrying contraband in the Channel.

His cottage on the eastern slopes of Highdown was surmounted by a weather vane, which depicted a smuggler being pursued by an Excise officer, who in turn was being chased by an old woman with a raised broom.

Olliver gained permission from the local landowner to construct his own tomb on Highdown, which stood for some 40 years before Olliver's actual death at the age of 84 in 1793.

Two thousand people attended his funeral. The wake ended in a drunken riot.

HAROLD PINTER: The famous playwright lived in Ambrose Place with his family during the early 1960s but moved back to London because of the amount of travelling he was doing between the coast and the capital.

One of Pinter's best-known works, The Birthday Party, was turned into a film starring Sidney Tafler, Patrick Magee and Robert Shaw.

The plot of The Birthday Party centred on two mysterious strangers menacing a down-at-heel lodger in a seafront boarding house.

Footage was shot in Chapel Road, South Street and on the seafront near its junction with Heene Road.

JOHN PULL: Retired Post Officer worker John Pull loved unearthing Worthing's past and was a proud man when elected president of Worthing Archaeological Society in 1952.

Mr Pull, who was married with a daughter, was renowned for the excavation of the prehistoric flint mines at Blackpatch, near Findon, before the Second World War, and in 1947 he began excavations of another ancient flint mine at Cissbury.

On November 10, 1960, Mr Pull, a part-time security guard, was shot dead by an armed raider at Lloyds Bank, near Field Place, Durrington.

The branch had only recently opened to serve the Worthing suburb's growing population, and Mr Pull, 61, was just a month into his new job.

CARL SEEBOLD: Seebold was Worthing's first cinema impresario, who had the Kursaal, later the Dome cinema, built.

Born in 1873, he was a German-Swiss national who arrived in Worthing in 1904, having formerly been lessee of Southend Pier.

Mr Seebold also acquired the New Theatre Royal, the Rivoli and the Picturedrome, now the Connaught Theatre.

He died in 1951, having introduced the town's citizens to the magic of movies.

PAUL SCHWEDER: Schweder lived at Courtlands, a mansion in Goring, which is now the headquarters of a computer software firm.

In 1916 he was at the centre of a controversial court case when he was effectively accused of spying.

Schweder, who had two sons in the British Army, told a court that the suggestion was preposterous and he was cleared.

A keen sportsman who often entertained large parties of sporting celebrities at his home, he died in 1936 at the age of 79 and was buried at Goring churchyard.

CONNIE SCOTT: Scott was a widely-respected councillor and former Mayor of Worthing in the late 1970s, earning the respect of all with her single-minded integrity.

Mrs Scott, a Conservative, broke the party whip when she stood up and opposed plans for a bypass cutting across the Downs north of Worthing.

She stuck to her guns despite intense political pressure and personal abuse, and the bypass plans were subsequently shelved.

She died in 1995 at the age of 66 and is buried at Durrington Cemetery.

HAILE SELASSIE: After being forced out of Abyssinia by invading Italians, the Emperor stayed at the Warnes Hotel for six weeks during the 1930s with his family.

He was seen standing on the balcony of his luxury apartments, gazing forlornly out over the English Channel.

Selassie said he enjoyed his stay in Worthing, and the peace and quiet the town offered.

He returned to rule Ethiopia in 1941 but was deposed in a 1974 military coup and died shortly after on August 26, 1975, aged 83.

SIR FREDERICK STERN: The world-renowned Highdown Gardens, on Highdown Hill, were created by Sir Frederick Stern.

Work on the ten-acre gardens, fashioned out of a disused chalk pit, started in 1909.

Today, they are filled with species of plants collected from all over the world.

When Sir Frederick died in 1967, aged 83, he left the land to Worthing Council to be used as an open space for the benefit of the people of Worthing, and the gardens now attract thousands of visitors a year.

Stern won the Military Cross after serving in Gallipoli and Palestine during the First World War. He was a commander of the West Sussex Home Guard during the Second World War.

OSCAR WILDE: Literary legend Oscar Wilde wrote his famous novel, the Importance of Being Earnest, while staying at The Esplanade, a now demolished house on East Worthing seafront.

It is said he penned the play in just 21 days during a stay in 1894.

The central character was a Mr Worthing and a local newspaper report about a baby being abandoned at a railway station prompted a key scene.

Wilde's career was rocked by scandal and, after a famous court case concerning his homosexuality, he was sentenced to two years' hard labour.

Wilde died of meningitis in Paris at the age of 49 in 1900.

EARL WINTERTON: Winterton was MP for the old Horsham Division, which included Worthing, for 47 years after being elected to Parliament in November, 1904.

At 6ft 3in tall, he was an imposing figure. During the First World War, Winterton served with the Sussex Yeomanry at Gallipoli and in Palestine, and then with Lawrence of Arabia.

He took part in thrilling raids on the railway line connecting Damascus and Medina, and was mentioned in dispatches.

His recipe for health was hard work, plenty of exercise, fox hunting, good English beer and good English beef.

Winterton died at the King Edward VII Sanitorium, Midhurst, in 1962, aged 79.

Can you add any more worthy names to the list? Write to Paul Holden at 35 Chapel Road, Worthing, BN11 1EG, or e-mail paul.holden@theargus.co.uk