Glimpses into Worthing's past are fascinating for modern-day time travellers, expanding the mind to days which have long since passed into oblivion.

Here The Sentinel recounts a wonderfully evocative journey into a bygone age. Just think, in 100 years' time, people will be looking back at our lives in similar nostalgic fashion, trying to picture what Worthing was like at the start of the 21st Century.

In 1873, a special correspondent of the Daily Telegraph who had been to Goodwood Races wrote the following about Worthing: "Halfway between Goodwood and Brighton lies a long low, wave-washed shore, which I take to be the most innocent spot on the south coast.

"For Worthing is almost wholly given up to children and domestic joys. Worthing is all for the children.

"It would be as monstrous to bring hither the scum of a racecourse as to swear in a nursery. Brighton and the surrounding districts are large enough to receive the turf drainage.

"The men and women with fearful faces, and still more fearful tongues, have kindly given Worthing a wide berth.

"There is nothing, believe me, Lilliputian or insignificant about Worthing. Her fine, extensive, gravelled promenade has a spacious Portland Place air about it.

"The sands when the tide retires are like a broad yellow racecourse between shingle and sea. The houses in West Worthing look as if Lancaster Gate and Hyde Park Gardens had come out of town for a holiday.

"Worthing has hotels with a serious dignified air about them - hotels where waiters in evening dress hand the salmon and the cutlet.

"But the impression left on my mind after visiting Worthing is that the place originally intended for grown-up folks and adults has been bombarded and taken over by an army from Lilliput.

"I never saw so many children or visited a seaside place, where they were more tenderly cared for.

"They swarm upon the shingle, they dig in the sand, they paddle and puddle in the little pools about the weed-covered rocks, their feet are wet and soaking a dozen times a day, they fish for eels and dabs off the pier.

"The parade by the side of the fine white houses clatters all day with the hoofs of the ponies of the children.

"Goat chaises are more patronised than flys, and the best use made of the breeze is to fly kites all the morning for the sake of the brownlegged little ones.

"Worthing obeys to the letter the old maxim concerning early rising and retiring. The day is scarcely warm before the boys are being bathed by their fathers.

"The breakfast things are cleared away by eight o'clock. The sands and the shingle are one long mile of nursery until one o'clock.

"The place is asleep all afternoon, and by ten every light is out but that of the moon, which makes a path of pleasant light, across a silent sea and illuminates a deserted shore.

"And why, let me ask, should there not be left alone round England one or two places like Worthing where excitement is neither courted nor desired?

"Worthing is profoundly happy and her inhabitants are happier still. She only wants to be left in peace, and permitted to do as she likes.

"She has no petty ambition or feeling of rivalry. She envies neither Brighton nor Bognor.

"Let those who will call her 'slow' and turn up their noses at her peaceful, innocent, orderly ways, but there are hundreds and thousands of people who will love Worthing all the better for the rest she gives and the dreamy indolence she suggests.

"It is the playground of the boys whose highest ambition is to rig a schooner, and of the girls in short petticoats who tangle their brothers' lines in a vain attempt to fish for flounders.

"Up in West Worthing some handsome speculators have built some swimming baths, which in point of taste cannot be excelled even at sister Brighton.

"Under the same Gothic roof are offered also that new luxury called an ozone bath, wherein those who require luxurious rest are permitted to doze and dream, reposing the while on a soft couch of oozy seaweed.

"At Worthing the whole air is impregnated with seaweed and each breeze is laden with salt. It is the place for rest and delicious idleness.

"After breakfast on the lawn, the book so eagerly attacked falls idly out of hands, and the morning pipe drops on the grass. We are ashamed of our own langour and abnormal laziness.

"We play with the shingle and feel sleepy; we repair to a seat on the promenade, and the warm sun makes us sleepier still; we move off, yawning, to the old boatmen and listen vacantly to some long, monotonous tale.

"In desperation we take a sail and as we are lifted along by the breeze we are rocked as in a cradle. We are burned and brown.

"The sun becomes hotter and hotter, and energy more impossible.

"The sea is rushing up upon the shingle, there are white crests for half-a-mile out across the water, now purple, now green, now blue.

"Each wave as it breaks at our feet contains a new tune. The presence of the sea fascinates us and we wander back to find the shingle and the promenade, pierhead and town, once again full of the children, refreshed with their tea and their sleep.

"The afternoon train comes in and there is a little excitement at the hotel doors. Ladies in cool muslin dresses appear on the balconies and beckon.

"They wave handkerchiefs and signal us home. Then in turn come the evening cool, the sunset and the calm.

"The band plays seriously, the lamps are lighted in Brighton across the bay, the moon comes up, and the day is done."