Wicked Littlehampton: surf, sand, cafes and art in West Sussex

28.02.2024 - 11:03 / theguardian.com / Art

It’s not often that Littlehampton, a small seaside town on the Sussex coast, makes the news. In the five decades since I was born there, I can count the times on the fingers of one hand: Nik Kershaw making the video for The Riddle in 1984 (oh, the teenage excitement); Anita Roddick, the town’s favourite daughter, being made a Dame in 2003; and the opening of the Thomas Heatherwick-designed East Beach cafe in 2007 (known to my family as the Rusty Tin).

This time, it’s for a poison pen letter scandal that rocked the town in the 1920s, now the basis of a major new film, Wicked Little Letters, released last Friday. Set on the streets of Littlehampton (although filmed in nearby Worthing and Arundel), the movie pits prim Olivia Colman against Jesse Buckley’s feisty Irishness in a battle to prove who is writing the letters.

A century ago, LA – as locals refer to it – was a very different place; one of a clutch of West Sussex beach resorts, along with Worthing and Bognor, that welcomed thousands of visitors in summer. Promoted as “the children’s paradise”, the town offered pleasure cruises up the River Arun, concerts on the beach green, and the broad, sandy beach itself – dotted with wheeled bathing tents that could be pulled right to the water’s edge. It stayed popular until the 1970s, when tourists started to head for the Mediterranean and the UK’s seaside boom began to fade.

But even in its gloomiest decades – the 80s, when I was at school there, and the 90s – it still retained a rakish, beachy charm. However dilapidated the town became, the beach remained glorious; a rare stretch of soft, golden sand on a mostly shingle coast. On summer days, we’d take great delight in getting to the beach before the “grockles” (day trippers) arrived, and staying long after they’d piled back into their cars, watching the sun dip over the West Beach dunes, separated from the main town beach by the wide mouth of the Arun.

Occasionally, we’d venture into the Butlins Park (now Harbour Park), for a whirl on the dodgems, or a ride on the rickety, metal framed Wild Mouse rollercoaster (not for the faint of heart). There were chips, eaten sat on breakwaters with salty fingers, illicit parties on the deck of beach huts, Saturday shopping sprees in the Indoor Market, where you could buy an entire outfit for £20, before a quick pitstop in the Wimpy next door.

I left the school – and the town – at 18, but still have close friends there and visit often, watching with pleasure as it has has slowly dusted itself off and embarked on a renaissance of sorts. The opening of the East Beach cafe was a landmark moment – some comparing it to the Guggenheim’s effect on Bilbao, albeit on a smaller scale – with Vogue calling it “England’s coolest