Littlehampton is a seaside town, harbour and civil parish in the Arun District of West Sussex, on the English Channel at the mouth of the River Arun. It sits around 52 miles south-south-west of London, 19 miles west of Brighton and 10 miles east of Chichester, with Bognor Regis along the coast to the west and Worthing to the east.
A harbour town with real history
People have lived around the mouth of the Arun since prehistoric and Roman times, and the settlement appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Hantone" — a small fishing hamlet. It's thought the "Little" was added to the name later to distinguish the town from the much larger Southampton along the coast. Ownership passed through the Abbey of St Martin de Seez in Normandy and later the Earls of Arundel, whose successors still live at Arundel Castle today. As the harbour silted up, a new river mouth was cut in 1735, and the town grew through the 18th and 19th centuries from working port into fashionable seaside resort, popular enough to draw visitors including Lord Byron, Coleridge, Shelley and John Constable.
People and place
The 2011 Census recorded a population of 27,795 for the Littlehampton civil parish, with the wider built-up area, including Wick, Lyminster and Rustington, often put at around 55,000. The town absorbed the neighbouring villages of Wick and Toddington in 1901, and Lyminster later still, each of which keeps something of its own identity today — covered in more detail on our villages and streets page.
Climate
Like the rest of the West Sussex coast, Littlehampton has a mild, maritime climate moderated by the English Channel, with cooler summers and milder winters than areas further inland. See our weather page for more detail.