The Villages through Conflict

This page will attempt to pull together the numerous threads of local

history touching upon the various Wars which have affected our two villages.

Please visit our recent sub-page, "Bombing in the Villages".

Click Here: Bombing in the Villages

Please also visit another new sub-page, "The Sompting Camps"

Click Here: The Sompting Camps

Our sub page:"Soldiers of the Queen" deals with the stories of local men during

the Boer War:

Click Here: Soldiers of the Queen

One of Pastfinders' earliest displays at Lancing Library in 1999 dealt with local

experience during the Second World War.

In 2012 the Group held a Special Evening following research into the same war at

which the researcher and author, Stewart Angel, gave a talk about his book “The

Secret Sussex Resistance” and the work of the hush-hush Home Guard units known

as the “Auxiliaries”.

Part of Stewart's story concerned the finding by the late Bill Lindfield just

after WW2 of the hideout of one of these units and its excavation.

Life in a Sherman Tank, a talk by Ken Tout

• At the Special Evening in 2012 we exhibited the results of other Wartime Research including:

  • German Air Raids Click Here:German Air Raids

  • Air Raid Shelters Click here:Threat of German Invasion

  • Pill Boxes Click here:Threat of German Invasion

  • Tank Blocks & Sea Defences Click here:Threat of German Invasion

• Prisoner of War Camps Click here:The Sompting Camps

• Wartime Memoirs

Pastfinders have made a number of Oral History videos in which oldest residents recall their wartime memories.

• One of our Local History Booklets entitled “Mrs Barrow's Diary” records her memories of the early part of the war in North Lancing when her husband was in the ARP. Please visit:

• Recently Tony Gardiner talked to us about WW2 and described the psychological warfare raids carried out by Focke Wulf 190 (known as Butcher Bird) fighter bombers which flew the short distance from Northern France to attack strategic targets along this part of the coast, such as a gasworks, the Lancing Carriage Works and the Metropole in West Worthing. They were timed, he explained, at lunch and tea times to create maximum panic and, as the planes flew only a few feet above the waves at 350mph, they were in and out before our radar and the Spitfires had time even to identify their presence.Click Here:German Air Raids

• The Soldiers who died