page_title: Worthing
section_title: Buildings and architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Worthing / Culture / Buildings and architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: The boat porch of a house in Portland Road, Worthing, West Sussex, England. These features are characteristic of, and unique to, Worthing. There are examples on 19th-century cottages in several streets in the town centre.
context_page_description: Worthing is a seaside town and district with borough status in West Sussex, England. It is situated at the foot of the South Downs, 10 miles west of Brighton, and 18 miles east of Chichester. With an estimated population of about 110,000 and an area of 12.5 square miles, the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation, which makes it part of the 15th most populous urban area in the United Kingdom. Since 2010, northern parts of the borough, including the Worthing Downland Estate, have formed part of the South Downs National Park. In April 2019, the Art Deco Worthing Pier was dubbed the best in Britain.
  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. Lying within the borough, the Iron Age hill fort of Cissbury Ring is one of Britain's largest. Worthing means " Worth/Worō's people", from the Old English personal name Worth/Worō, and -ingas "people of". The recorded history of Worthing began with the Domesday Book.
context_section_description: Few structures in central Worthing predate the 19th century, these being a few buildings on Worthing High Street that are survivals from the early fishing hamlet of Worthing.  There are some older buildings in the former villages outside the town centre.  For example parts of St Mary's Church in Broadwater date to the Saxon period and West Tarring has several buildings from the medieval and Tudor periods, including St Andrew's Church and the Archbishop's Palace, which date from the 13th century.
  There are 213 listed buildings in the borough of Worthing. Three of these—Castle Goring, St Mary's Church at Broadwater and the Archbishop's Palace at West Tarring—are classified at Grade I, which is used for buildings "of exceptional interest, sometimes considered to be internationally important". Worthing Pier, Park Crescent, Beach House and several churches are also listed.
  Since 1896, when Warwick House was demolished, many historic buildings have been lost and others altered.  The town's first and most distinguished theatre, the Theatre Royal, and the adjacent Omega Cottage (the home of the theatre's first manager) were lost in 1970 when the Guildbourne Centre was built; Warne's Hotel and the Royal Sea House burnt down; the early bath-houses which were vital to Worthing's success as a fashionable resort were all demolished in the 20th century; Broadwater's ancient rectory rotted away after it fell out of use in 1924; and several old streets in the town centre had all their buildings demolished for postwar redevelopment.
  Pale yellow bricks have been made locally since about 1780, and are commonly encountered as a building material. Flint is the other predominant structural material: its local abundance has ensured its frequent use. The combination of flint and red brick is characteristic of Worthing. In particular, walls built alongside streets or to mark out boundaries were almost always built of flint with brick dressings, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  Boat porches are a unique architectural feature of Worthing. These structures surround the entrance doors of some early 19th-century houses, and take the form of a stuccoed porch with an ogee-headed roof which resembles the bottom of a boat. Historians have speculated that the cottages, examples of which are in Albert Place, Warwick Place and elsewhere, may have been built by local fishermen who used their boats as a basis for the design.
  The town has a small number of residential high-rise buildings including Manor Lea at 43 metres, built in 1967 and Bayside Vista at 52 metres (172 ft), under development and expected to be completed in 2020.  The Splashpoint Leisure Centre won a World Architecture Festival award in 2013.  A 46-metre tall ferris wheel was opened in 2019.
caption: Boat porches are found only in Worthing.
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