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.
It is a bitter twist that the pub is to be converted into a
branch of … Morrisons.
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.
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