Station Partner, St Andrew’s CE High School for Boys has produced a beautiful mural for the waiting room at Worthing, drawing on research conducted about the historic Teville Stream. The Station Manager and the Line Officer had asked for this topic, as the Teville Stream runs underneath the underpass at Worthing station, and markers on the underpass show the level of previous flooding.
Art teacher, Caroline Woodward explained a bit more about the process:
“After doing a lot of research about the Teville stream students found out the following information that informed the design:
– It dates back to the Neolithic period until around 2000BC.
– Worthing’s Roman grid system, known as ‘centuriation’ was based on plots and their distance from the Teville stream.
– It is possible that in medieval times a harbour was sited at the stream’s estuary.
– The Teville stream was tidal and considerably wider than it is today.
– During WW2,the culverts of the Teville stream were re-cut to form a more effective barrier against tanks.
– The Teville stream was used by smugglers as a way of transporting their illegal goods.
Since the Teville stream has been an important feature throughout the history of Worthing, we thought that we would like to show its continuing importance in the form of a visual timeline.
Our design included a range of materials to demonstrate the progression of the stream from Neolithic times to modern day. We symbolised this by using Papier-mâché and cardboard fossil layers under the earth, followed by the collaged bottle top stream. Students drew the smugglers as mono prints and then incorporated mono prints of the modern day uses of the stream; including the trains that cross over it and then the animals who rely upon it as a source of food and water.
Working as three teams the students were allocated different areas of the mural to work on depending on their areas of artistic strength. The day was a huge success and students remarked on how exciting it had been to take part; working as a team to produce such an exciting piece of artwork based upon this historic local site.”
Eighteen students from Key Stage 3 were involved in the mural workshop day. The cost of materials was funded by GTR from the Station Partnership fund. Once the artwork was produced, GTR facilities team arranged for it to be collected and installed at the station.
