About
Rustington Museum tells the story of a West Sussex coastal village that has been, in turn, a farming parish, a First World War aviation centre, an interwar holiday resort and a substantial modern seaside settlement. It is a small community museum in the Samuel Wickens Centre behind the village's Waitrose, run with the support of the parish council, and it works at exactly the scale where local history is most useful: one place, followed from the Stone Age to living memory, with the evidence laid out.
The earliest material is archaeological, from flint tools found in the fields and along the coast to Roman and Saxon traces, and the museum then follows the parish through the medieval church of St Peter and St Paul, which retains Norman work, and centuries of agricultural life on the coastal plain between the Downs and the sea. What changes the story is the twentieth century, and Rustington's twentieth century was unusually eventful for a village of its size.
During the First World War an aircraft acceptance park was established here, where machines were assembled, tested and handed over to the Royal Flying Corps, bringing hangars, personnel and aircraft to what had been farmland. Between the wars the coast filled with holiday camps and chalet developments as railway and motor access opened the Sussex shore to visitors from London, and the museum documents that seaside boom and the building that followed it. It also records the village's most distinguished resident: Sir Hubert Parry, composer of the setting of Jerusalem, who kept a house at Rustington and died there in 1918.
Displays are compact, changed regularly, and supported by an active programme of talks and events, all of which are free. Entry costs nothing, the centre is on one level, and the volunteers who staff it are the reason most visitors stay longer than they intended.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Telephone 01903 788479 before travelling - this is a small community museum and opening can vary.
- The centre closes for half an hour at lunchtime, between 13:00 and 13:30.
- Entry and all the museum's talks and events are free; check what is on before you come.
- Parking is in the adjoining Broadmark Lane public car park, which also serves the shops.
- The museum is entirely on one level with step-free access - straightforward for wheelchairs and pushchairs.
- Ask the volunteers about a particular street or house; much of the collection is not on display.
- Combine the visit with the seafront green, about ten minutes' walk away.
- Allow longer than the size of the room suggests - the twentieth-century material is unusually rich for a village.
Highlights
The First World War aircraft acceptance park
Rustington's most unexpected chapter came in the First World War, when an aircraft acceptance park was established on farmland here. Newly built machines were delivered, assembled, test-flown and formally accepted into Royal Flying Corps service, which meant hangars, workshops, service personnel and a constant traffic of aeroplanes over a village that had seen nothing like it.
The museum gathers photographs, documents and recollections of the site, the aircraft types handled and the people who worked there, and explains how quickly the installation appeared and how completely it vanished afterwards, leaving a coastal village to return to farming and holidays.
Sir Hubert Parry at Rustington
Sir Hubert Parry, whose setting of Blake's Jerusalem is sung wherever English choirs gather, kept a house at Rustington and died there in 1918. The museum records his connection with the village, his working habits by the sea, his interest in sailing, and the local memory of a composer who was by then one of the most eminent musicians in the country.
The material makes a useful corrective to the assumption that Parry belongs to London and the Royal College of Music alone; a good deal of his later life was spent on this stretch of the Sussex coast.
The interwar holiday camp coast
Between the wars the Sussex coast between Littlehampton and Worthing filled with holiday camps, chalet estates and bungalow developments, as cheap land, improved railways and the motor car brought Londoners to the seaside in numbers. Rustington's share of that boom transformed the parish, and the museum documents it through photographs, brochures, postcards and personal recollection: the camps themselves, the entertainment, the plotland housing that grew alongside them, and the tension between a farming village and a holiday economy that arrived within a single generation.
From flint to Domesday
The museum's earliest material comes from the coastal plain itself: worked flints from the fields and foreshore, and evidence of Roman and Saxon activity in a landscape that has been farmed continuously for thousands of years.
Rustington appears in Domesday, and the parish church of St Peter and St Paul retains Norman fabric that anchors the village's medieval history in something visitors can walk to afterwards. The displays keep this section short and concrete, using objects and maps to show how the settlement sat between the Downs, the Arun and the sea.
Collections
Rustington Museum holds the local history of one West Sussex coastal parish from prehistory to the present: worked flints and archaeological material from the coastal plain, records of the medieval parish and its Norman church, farming tools, photographs and farm records from centuries of agriculture, and extensive twentieth-century material covering the First World War aircraft acceptance park, the interwar holiday camps and chalet developments, the Second World War coastal defences and home front, and the shops, schools and clubs of village life.
The collection also documents Sir Hubert Parry's residence in the village and his death there in 1918. Displays are compact and changed regularly, supported by a free programme of talks and events.
The Village Story
Rustington from flint tools and Domesday through centuries of farming to the modern seaside settlement.
Wings over Rustington
The First World War aircraft acceptance park and the village's wartime experience in both world wars.
Holidays by the Sea
The interwar holiday camps, chalets and plotland developments that changed the parish.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.