The Old Crab House

Part of the ‘past to present’ series from Jemverse

Now long gone from the harbour
demolished years ago
the Old Crab Inn as once it was
is nestled there below
alongside the old shingle beach
beneath the tunnelled hill
at the bottom end of Gardener Road
for halcyon days to fill

©Jemverse

Photo – from a postcard in the author’s collection

[The old Crab House, originally the ‘Crab Inn’ was built on a shingle beach-fronted spit of land at the base of the cliff bordering Shoreham Harbour in West Sussex, UK. Demolished in the 1940’s, the land adjacent to it housed a Canadian army encampment, billeted there at the beginning of the second world war to man two ‘Bofer’ anti-aircraft guns positioned on the cliff-head behind the house. The ‘tunnelled hill’ reference relates to a number of old smugglers tunnels built below the cliffs in this area].

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