Morning Star sign shines on

The Morning Star in Ham Road has been pulled down to make way for a new housing development.

But Adur council chairman Brian Coomber was keen that the sign be preserved, so he arranged for it to be delivered to the Marlipins Museum in Shoreham High Street by Astra Demolition, the company demolishing the building.

It will go on display when the museum re-opens for its new season on May 1, 2007.

The pub sign is a lyrical view of the morning star shining brightly above a village scene, with a trailing plant in the foreground. This does not mention the original reason for the pub's name, which was the train called the Morning Star.

Historian Trevor Povey believes the pub was founded around the 1880s, by the old Shoreham sidings, and was ideally placed to provide for the needs of the railway workers, people going to the theatre and perhaps even the workhouse workers, all nearby in Ham Road.