Fishing smacks in the creek
Hove Creek was a working waterway in the early twentieth century. Historic photographs show fishermen repairing nets beside the creek, and fishing smacks could enter it to moor and receive maintenance.
Smacks needed roughly four to five feet of water to use the creek. Its depth and sheltered position made it suitable for work that was difficult to carry out in an exposed anchorage.
The creek silts up
Longshore drift moved shingle across the entrance while mud and silt accumulated inside. That combination reduced the water reaching the creek and made it increasingly shallow. Larger fishing smacks ceased to use the head of the creek before small craft did: local accounts still recall dinghies and small boats laying up here into the early to mid-1960s.
Other parts of the foreshore changed at the same time. Grassland and saltmarsh shifted, sediment accumulated in sheltered areas, and the shoreline became more exposed to changing tides and wave action.
Freshwater and Hove Marsh
Freshwater springs, including those around St Peter's Well, once supported ordinary grass at adjacent Hove Marsh. Local memories from the 1920s describe that marsh as the “cricket field”.
The wider foreshore
The western shore also contains evidence of much earlier activity, including the Bronze Age timber trackway. The 1920–2020 coastal-change survey brings together historic photographs and local recollections of the creek.
Photographs and memories, 1920–2020
The Changing Minds Changing Coasts survey compared residents’ photographs and oral histories over a century. It records both the gradual blockage of the creek entrance and the changing shingle spit at Hove Beach. The changes happened over decades, rather than in a single flood.