Understand
Although a seaside town with a pier, a prom and pleasant seaside parks, for much of the 20th century the town seems to have taken its eye off the ball with regards tourism, preferring to see itself as a town by the sea rather than a seaside town. In recent years, the town has been getting its act together; palm trees have been planted along the beach promenade, the iconic Dome Cinema has been restored and the area around Splash Point revitalised. The town has a growing reputation for the arts and now hosts the Worthing Birdman event which attracts tens of thousands of people. Further regeneration work is planned, including a £150 million redevelopment of the Teville Gate area near the station.
The hills around Worthing were home to some of Britain's earliest and most extensive flint-mining operations, which saw some of the hardest flint available mined for thousands of years and exported across much of Britain and Europe. These flints helped people to fell trees, bringing about the neolithic revolution turning the nomadic Stone Age into a settled agricultural Bronze Age. Church Hill dates from 4500 BC. You can still see the filled-in mineshafts on the edge of Cissbury Ring, just north of town.
Settled since the Bronze Age, Worthing remained a small fishing hamlet until the 1750s, when various wealthy citizens visited for the hunting and fishing opportunities afforded by the area. Princess Amelia, daughter of King George III, stayed in Montague Place in 1798, which put the town firmly on the map of England's fashionable society. In the 19th century, Worthing was an elegant and fashionable resort attracting the rich and famous of the day.
It is famous for being used as the location for the movie Wish You Were Here as well as its literary connections. Oscar Wilde named the central character of The Importance of Being Earnest after the town, and wrote the play while stayed here at the height of the town`s fashionability in the 1890s. Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon is thought to have been significantly based on experiences from her stay in Worthing in 1805. A blue plaque marks the former home of Nobel prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter in Ambrose Place.
Today Worthing has a windsurfing and kitesurfing centre at the western end of the promenade and is a good place to stay for visitors wishing to explore the South Downs which are just north of the town.
Worthing population 100,000 is a large town and the centre of an urban area of 185,000. With nearby Brighton, it forms part of England's tenth largest conurbation, with nearly half a million residents.
