As the opening decade of the 21st century unfolds, the ancient heart of Tarring finds itself in a bit of a mess.

Tarring High Street, with timber-framed homes dating back to medieval times, is clogged with parked cars.

Glebe Road, linking Rectory Road to Church Road and Terringes Avenue, has become a terrible traffic bottleneck where at times the exhaust fumes are oppressive.

What should be one of the most pleasant suburbs of Worthing has become a slave to the internal combustion engine and there would appear to be no solution.

But it wasn't always so, as the following account, penned by Edward Sayers in 1912, testifies.

He was prompted to record his memories of Tarring in 1850 when two flower-filled meadows on the Athelstan Park Estate were earmarked for housing development.

Today, Athelstan Road, Ethelwulf Road, Ethelred Road and Peverel Road occupy land once fringed with hedgerows and grazed by livestock.

Mr Sayers painted a picture which suggested a rural idyll at a time when Tarring had its own identity, which was far removed from its more boisterous neighbour, Worthing, in the distance across the fields.

He wrote: "It seems a pity that so much highly productive land should be covered with bricks and mortar when there is so much less fertile land to the north.

"But I suppose sentiment gives way to progress.

"In the larger of these two meadows, for about ten years from 1849, I often worked, helping to make hay, etc, and had many a game of cricket there after the hay had been cleared off. I have climbed every tree in the hedgerows there for tree-sparrows' eggs in the top branches and starlings' eggs in the hollow trunks and often wonder that I am still alive and without broken bones.

"In dry summers I noticed, a few yards from the street (presumably what is now South Street), signs of the foundation of a building, probably a barn, and asked my father to allow me to excavate that part, but could not obtain his consent.

"It was at that time usually my duty to fetch the cows home from the meadow for the afternoon milking and I used to go out of the school earlier than the rest of the boys for that purpose. The old town (as the locals used to call Tarring) is much altered since then. At that time there were in Tarring (excluding the hamlet of Salvington) only 106 houses, and 33 of these have since been pulled down and one destroyed by fire.

"Of those pulled down, seven were thatched and five were healed with Horsham stone. Another thatched house is shortly to disappear, one which has a history dating back to the 15th century.

"The Old Rectory and its gardens were then surrounded by high walls.

"There were no less than eight farmhouses opening on to the street, with their barns, stables and carthouses, most of which were thatched.

"And there were six other farmhouses away from the street, so that Tarring might then have been called an agricultural town.

"All the inhabitants numbered were one clergyman, six or seven families of independent means, two beershop keepers, one blacksmith, one master bricklayer, two butchers, one master carpenter, one cooper, one corn and seed merchant, one cow-keeper, six farmers, one master gardener, two grocers, one harness-maker, two innkeepers, one linen draper, one maltster, one miller, one millwright, one parish clerk and sexton, one private schoolmaster, three shoemakers, one straw hat maker (female), two tailors, two thatchers, one undertaker, one wheelwright, the rest being assistants or agricultural labourers."

By 1912, as Mr Sayers lamented the gradual disappearance of Tarring's rural aspect, only one of these people was still alive.

If you have memories of old Tarring, or views on the current traffic situation, write to reporter Paul Holden at The Sentinel, 35 Chapel Road, Worthing, West Sussex, or e-mail paul.holden@theargus.co.uk