Worthing town centre: 100 years of change in Montague Street, now the busiest shopping precinct

Boots has been there so long, it was rumoured to have had the first telephone number in Worthing, Worthing 1, and M&S has been around for decades – with the store once said to be a trailblazer for the company.

The history of Montague Street can be traced through photographs and postcards, thanks to local historian Ian Richardson's vast collection. He has created a series of slideshows chronicling Worthing's past, including three covering the town centre, to take people back on a journey through time.

He said: “There are pictures of over 100 years of the life and times of Montague Street. It's good that it continues to develop.”

Before Montague Street was pedestrianised, cars would battle to get along and with two-way traffic, pedestrians were in great danger there. Ian said you could see some of the shoppers having to step off the pavement to pass each other, so it was 'an accident waiting to happen'.

Portland Road once ran right through to the seafront, with M&S on the southern corner, at the junction with Montague Street, and Boots on the corner diagonally opposite.

Now, of course, Portland Road ends at the precinct, due to the expansion of M&S in the 1960s. Ian's mother worked there for 20 years and he tells a surprising story about its history.

He said: “My mother worked at Marks & Spencer from 1963 through to the 1980s and she used to say that one of the owners, a Mr Sieff, lived in Ferring. He used to regard the Worthing store very much as his own personal store and he would regularly attend on Fridays, use it as a trailblazer with all sorts of new items, and so on and so forth.

“So Worthing, at one stage, was a very important leader of Marks & Spencer. The store was given an extension. There was a temporary building first, before the newer building.”

Woolworths opened its first Worthing store in Rowlands Road in 1920. The second store was in Montague Street, on the corner of Montague Place and Montague Street. It was founded as a Threepenny and Sixpenny store and early photos clearly indicate that nothing in the Worthing store cost over sixpence when it first opened.

Shoppers looking for groceries once had plenty of choice in Montague Street. Feest & Sons, fruiterers and greengrocers, was a long-established shop in Worthing, before the site was acquired by Tesco, and there was also Leggett & Son fruiterers.

Liquid refreshment was also readily available, with a number of pubs to choose from. The King's Arms, where Henty and Constable ales could be bought, had a Dickensian appearance and a magnificent lamp outside.

Ian said: “The King's Arms was supposed to be haunted by smugglers and a lot of smuggling went on in very early times in this particular place. It also had a very interesting basement area as well.”

There was also The Buckingham Arms, The White Hart, New Street Brewery, The Montague Arms and The Victoria Arms, with one picture taken outside the pub in the early 1950s showing the challenging traffic congestion which regularly occurred in Montague Street.

The Isted store was around for many years, advertising corn, hay and straw, flour and seeds, and WHSmith, now TGJones, once had the Old English Restaurant above the shop.

Photographs from the late 1970s and early 1980s show places like Richard Shops, Dixons, Timothy Whites, Top Shop, Aston the chemist and Hornes, men's outfitters.

Ian said: “The advertisement says official outfitters to St Andrew's School and I remember my mother taking me in the 1960s along to Hornes for my first St Andrew's uniform.”

The Odeon Cinema opened in Liverpool Road in 1934 and closed in 1986. After it was demolished, major development took place, linking the Montague Centre to Montague Street.

Ian runs the Surfleet Worthing and District History Group, which meets monthly at East Worthing Community Centre on the third Monday of the month, 7pm to 9pm, and Steyne Local History Study at the Ardington Hotel, in Steyne Gardens, at the end of each month, meeting on a Tuesday, 10.30am to 12pm.