Despite the best efforts of a group of local residents who
formed The Friends of the Ship Inn, Aldwick, this once popular pub is due to
meet the same fate as so many others in recent times and be converted into a
supermarket convenience store. The pub had been struggling in recent times, often
closed for periods between the arrival and departure of a succession of
tenants, but it does not help when the owners, Enterprise Inns, sell beer to
those tenants at a much higher price than free traders could obtain it, and charge
rents that make it difficult to run a profitable pub. All credit then to The
Friends, who wanted to keep the Ship open and eventually have it registered by
the council as an Asset of Community Value. It is interesting that, at a
meeting with The Friends, Enterprise Inns had claimed their current plan was to
find a new long-term tenant, then invest in further refurbishment and so keep
the pub as a viable business. No further comment is necessary.
The origin of the Ship as an alehouse predates the 1841
census, its earliest recorded reference. It was owned by the South Street
Brewery of George Gatehouse, Chichester from some point until 1889 when it was sold
to George Henty & Son (later Henty & Constable) of that same city. It
was acquired in 1955 by Tamplin & Sons, Brighton, who subsequently sold out
to Watneys. The premises of the pub were supposedly once connected to the beach
by a smugglers’ tunnel that tended to flood in bad weather. No trace of this
passage now remains. There are scores of pubs that have had this tale told of
them. A more believable story is that the Ship was used in the Edwardian era as
a base by pioneering film maker Cecil Hepworth. The pub was modernised in the 1930s.
A small beer garden was in those days secluded behind a row of wooden lock-up
garages on what is now the car park. The inn sign of the late 1940s (below) was
painted by Arundel artist Ralph Ellis.
The Inn’s distance from Bognor Regis allowed it to retain a
village pub atmosphere. The blocked up doorways in the porch entrance show that
the left side saloon would have once been divided up into separate sections,
probably including a Jug & Bottle. The Ship retained a separate right side
bar, used as a games room. The interior was otherwise completely modernised and
of no heritage interest. A list of licensees runs thus: Mary Cobden, 1841; John
Mant, 1842; Richard Hayden, 1852; George Cooper, 1861; Fredrick Holkham, 1871;
Samuel Frost; Caroline Frost; Albert Booker, 1885; Thomas Morris, 1889; Edwin
Chas Millar, 1903; Louisa M. Millar, 1927; Ernest E, Millar, 1937; Frederick J.
Smith, 1941; Dorothy Smith, 1944; Christian Oberst, 1944; Leonard O. Burgess,
1951; Thomas Eric Bailey, 1954; Alexander Morrison, 1971. The Morrison family,
who had the pub for at least ten years from 1970, stocked over 250 brands of
Scotch whisky behind the bar.
It is a bitter twist that the pub is to be converted into a
branch of … Morrisons.
Sources:
Butler, Charles (1997) Inns,
Taverns and Hotels, Past and Present of BOGNOR REGIS including Pagham &
Felpham, Bognor Regis Local History Society.
Gowler, Margaret (2004), ‘Ralph Ellis: Designer and Painter
of Inn Signs’, Bognor Regis Local History
Society Newsletter, No. 50 (March), pp. 16-22.
The Observer
(1980), ‘Spirits of Smugglers no longer Illicit at Ship’, Friday 15th August.
Doors open 12noon Friday 28th November.
