Pagham, however, of which I
had read, with its creek and harbour, its curious Hushing Well, its
golden sands, and extraordinary melancholy, as it were a ruin of the
sea, sadly disappointed me. Only its melancholy remains. Its harbour,
where of old we read the sea-fowl were to be seen in innumerable
flocks, and the whole place was musical with the cry of the wild-swan,
has been wholly reclaimed, and the famous Hushing Well no longer exists
at all. This last was a curious natural phenomenon and must have been
worth seeing. It consisted apparently of a great pool in the sea, one
hundred and thirty feet long by thirty feet broad, boiling and bubbling
and booming all day long. This was caused, it is said, by the air
rushing through a bed of shingle beneath which was a vast cavern from
which the sea continuously expelled the air as it rushed in. Nothing of
the sort exists at Pagham to-day; it has disappeared with the
reclamation of the harbour, which itself was formed, we are told, in
the fourteenth century by a tidal wave, when nearly three thousand
acres were inundated. The only thing which the continual fight of man
against water in this peninsula has left us that is worth seeing in
Pagham to-day is the church of St Thomas of Canterbury.
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