Lancing Village Memories: Part 2b - The Secret of the "Hush Hush" Shop

Saturday, 24 January 2026

Part 2b - The Secret of the "Hush Hush" Shop

Part 2b: The Secret of the "Hush Hush" Shop

While many in Lancing knew the Carriage Works as the heart of the Southern Railway, few realised that during the height of the war, a section of the works had been transformed into a high-stakes aeronautical factory. This was the "Hush Hush" Shop.

While men like Mr Warr (whose story we tell in Part 3) were training as the first line of defence against incendiary bombs, Evelyn and her team in the 'Hush Hush' shop were fighting a different kind of battle—one of precision and volatile chemicals.

Evelyn Steadman was one of the few transferred from the Upholstery department to this secret world. Her task wasn't just to "sew"; it was to engineer the wings of the Airspeed Horsa Glider. These weren't standard railway repairs; these wings were built to a staggering precision of 0.001”.

Evelyn’s transition from upholstery to glider production was a natural fit. The Trimmers at Lancing were world-renowned for their work on luxury railway interiors; the same steady hands that stitched plush velvet and leather were now tasked with the '8-stitch' precision required for Grade A Linen aircraft skins. It was a shift from the comfort of the commute to the survival of the soldier.

Evelyn Steadman and her workmate Ada.
"We had to stretch calico over the frames with eight stitches to the inch and a double knot every six inches," Evelyn recalled. "Once stitched, it went to the 'Dope Room' to be hardened until the fabric felt as solid as plywood."

Note the rhythm of the workers and the scale of the wings as they are finally loaded—the very moment the precision work was handed over to the front line.

The technical requirements were staggering:

The Woodwork: The men crafting the wooden wing frames worked to a tolerance of one-thousandth of an inch (0.001").
The Stitching: Calico was stretched over these frames and secured with buttonhole stitching.
The 8-Stitch Rule: The standard was exactly 8 stitches to the inch—never 7 and never 9.
The Security: A double knot was required every 6 inches to prevent any movement.

The girls from Lancing Carriage works/"Hush Hush" shop. Evelyn Steadman front centre left.

The Fortress in the Garden: From Coaches to Gliders

The site—often celebrated as a 'factory in a garden'—found itself repurposed as a vital military fortress. The video below illustrates this transition, showing how the engineering shops were pivoted to produce Horsa glider frames and even small ships.

Watch this footage of Horsa Gliders in action to see the result of the 'Hush Hush' shop's labour.

The Longest Floating Bailey Bridge

A notable example is the bridge constructed across the River Maas at Gennep in February 1945. This was the longest floating Bailey bridge ever built during WWII, stretching nearly 1,400 metres. Lancing Carriage Works was a key production site for the airtight floating pontoons that made this crossing possible.

Did You Know?

At the height of the Second World War, 105,743 women were employed on the railways and in workshops across the country. In Lancing, they weren't just office workers; they were technical engineers providing the buoyancy needed for tanks to cross the Maas and the Rhine.