Bognor, Sussex
Historical Description
Bognor, a small town, township, and chapelry in South. Bersted parish, Sussex. The town stands on the coast, and has a station on the L.B. & S.C.R., 63 miles from London, and 6½ SE by E of Chichester. It has a governing body under a local Act; a post, money order, and telegraph office; and a pier, constructed chiefly of iron on the screw principle, 1000 feet long with a head 40 feet across, opened in 1865. A promenade, paved with bricks and nearly a mile in length, was completed in 1870 at a cost of about £8000, and in 1886 further extensive sea defences and additions to the esplanade were completed at the west end, costing about £6500. The Victoria Drive, of more than a mile in length, communicating with the sea and connecting Bognor with South Bersted, is planted with trees, forming an extremely pleasant boulevard. The Church of St John the Baptist is a building of flint with red brick facings, erected in 1882. The old church, with the exception of the tower, was pulled down in 1893. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester; net value,. £87 with residence, in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The priory, with the adjoining Roman Catholic-church, was built in 1881, and contains some fine sculptures. The town was changed from an obscure hamlet to a fashionable watering-place, between 1786 and 1799, by Sir Richard Hotham, at a cost of £60,000, and took for a time the name of Hothamston. It was frequented by Queen Charlotte and her children in the time of George III., and ife then possessed a sort of exclusive character, but it afterwards became dependent on general public patronage. It comprises rows of brick houses, two squares open on one side to the sea, a crescent, a terrace, and several detached mansions; it possesses good lodging-houses, several hotels, and excellent bathing conveniences; and it has Congregational and Wesleyan chapels, a reading-room, a circulating library, several excellent private schools, and a people's institute. The assembly-rooms at West Bognor were built in 1886; they will hold 800 people. There are several convalescent homes. A two-days' pleasure fair is held on 5 and 6 July. The surrounding country is flat, and the Bognor rocks, famed by geologists, and at one time forming a line of low cliffs along the coast, are now visible only at low water. Area of the urban sanitary district, which includes part of South Bersted, 523 acres; population of the township, 4104; of the chapelry, 8171.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | Sussex | |
| Civil parish | South Bersted | |
| Hundred | Aldwick |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Bognor from the following:
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Sussex newspapers online: