Place:Worthing, Sussex, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Worthing is a large seaside town in England, and a municipality with borough status in West Sussex. It is situated at the foot of the South Downs, 10 miles (16 km) west of Brighton, and 18 miles (29 km) east of the county town of Chichester. With an estimated population of 110,000 and an area of 12.5 square miles (32.4 km2) the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation. Since 2010 northern parts of the borough, including the Worthing Downland Estate, have formed part of the South Downs National Park.

The area around Worthing has been populated for at least 6,000 years and contains Britain's greatest concentration of Stone Age flint mines, which are some of the earliest mines in Europe. Worthing means "(place of) Worth/Worō's people", from the Old English personal name Worth/Worō (the name means "valiant one, one who is noble"), and -ingas "people of" (reduced to -ing in the modern name).

For many centuries Worthing was a small mackerel fishing hamlet. In the late 18th century it developed into an elegant Georgian seaside resort and attracted the well-known and wealthy of the day. In the 19th and 20th centuries the area has also been one of Britain's chief market gardening centres.

Modern Worthing has a large service industry, particularly in financial services. It has three theatres and one of Britain's oldest cinemas. Writers Oscar Wilde and Harold Pinter lived and worked in the town.

Local government for the borough of Worthing is shared between Worthing Borough Council and West Sussex County Council in a two-tier structure. Worthing was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1890, when the towns absorbed the neighbouring civil parish of Heene. Further enlargements took place in 1902 (Broadwater and West Tarring parishes), 1929 (Durrington and Goring by Sea parishes) and 1933 parts of (Findon and Sompting parishes). In 1974 it was reincorporated as Worthing District or Borough of Worthing under the Local Government Act 1972. The modern borough is divided into 13 wards, with 11 returning three councillors and two returning two councillors to form a total council of 37 members. The borough is unparished.

History of Worthing

Worthing remained an agricultural and fishing hamlet within the parish of Broadwater for centuries until the arrival of wealthy visitors in the 1750s. Princess Amelia, daughter of George III, stayed in the town in 1798 and the fashionable and wealthy continued to visit or stay in Worthing, which became a town in 1803. The town expanded and elegant developments such as Park Crescent and Liverpool Terrace were begun. The area was also a stronghold of smugglers in the 19th century.

Oscar Wilde holidayed in the town in 1893 and 1894, writing the Importance of Being Earnest during his second visit. The town was home to several literary figures in the 20th century, including Nobel prize-winner Harold Pinter. During the Second World War, Worthing was home to several allied military divisions in preparation for the D-Day landings.

Research Tips

• The West Sussex Record Office is located in Chichester. Because it holds the records of the Church of England Diocese of Chichester, which covers the whole of Sussex, it has church records relating to both parts of Sussex.
• An on-line catalogue for some of the collections held by the West Sussex Record Office is available under the Access to Archives (A2A) project (a nationwide facility housed at The National Archives, Kew).
• West Sussex Past - database of 2 million records from West Sussex heritage organizations.
• The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies' Sussex Collection (PDF). This is a 9-page PDF naming the files relating to Sussex in their collection-a possible first step in a course of research.
• The National Library of Scotland has a website which provides maps taken from the Ordnance Survey England & Wales One-Inch to the Mile series of 1892-1908 as well as equivalent maps for Scotland itself. The immediate presentation is a "help" screen and a place selection screen prompting the entry of a location down to town, village or parish level. These screens can be removed by a click of the "X". The map is very clear and shows parish and county boundaries and many large buildings and estates that existed at the turn of the 20th century. Magnification can be adjusted and an "overlay feature" allows inspection of the area today along with that of 1900. The specific map from the series can be viewed as a whole ("View this map") and this allows the inspection of the map legend (found in the left hand bottom corner. Becoming familiar with the various facilities of these maps is well worth the trouble.

• GENUKI on Worthing
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 6, Part 1, Bramber Rape: Southern Part, introductory section on Worthing and the first of a number of chapters covering the borough
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Arundel Rape and on that for East Preston Rural District.