Walk around Worthing for long enough and sooner or later, you will probably meet Horace.

Not the man himself, necessarily. Nobody is quite supposed to know who he is.

But you might meet one of his cats staring back from a wall, a larger-than-life local celebrity sprayed onto the side of a building, an enormous bird, or some other unexpected character occupying a patch of brickwork that most towns would have simply left grey.

Horace has become something of a Worthing institution — despite remaining anonymous.

And perhaps appropriately, even his name comes with a particularly Worthing story.

Why 'Horace'?

The artist's adopted name is reportedly a tribute to Horace Duke, one of Worthing's great local characters.

Duke, born Horace Albert Duke in 1923, was widely known around town as "Burlington Bertie". Older residents still remember the immaculately dressed figure in his suit and boater hat, often seen around Worthing and occasionally making his opinions very clear to passing motorists.

The modern-day Horace appears to have liked the idea of borrowing the name of somebody who had already become part of Worthing folklore.

It is a rather fitting choice.

One Horace made Worthing's streets memorable by standing in them. The other has done it by painting them.

Then the faces started appearing

By 2019, Horace was becoming difficult to miss.

A series of stencil portraits began appearing around the town depicting people with connections to Worthing.

There was Billy Idol, who went to school here; actor Gwendoline Christie; broadcaster Simon Mayo; MasterChef winner Kenny Tutt; children's television favourite Dave Benson Phillips; members of Royal Blood; and even Tank Girl, whose creators have strong Worthing connections.

Horace Duke himself naturally made the cut.

The collection became known through the hashtag #WorthingGraffitiPortraits.

And, in true street-art tradition, it wasn't entirely without controversy.

The Billy Idol portrait on the Egremont pub prompted a complaint and ended up before Worthing Borough Council's planning committee. Council papers from May 2019 describe it as part of a wider series celebrating Worthing-linked artists, musicians and celebrities.

There is something wonderfully Worthing about a picture of Billy Idol becoming a planning matter.

From a wall to an entire road

Then Horace went considerably bigger.

In the summer of 2020, while Worthing's businesses were attempting to emerge from the first COVID lockdown, Portland Road was transformed.

Horace designed the enormous "Back in the Game" artwork painted directly onto the road as part of the Time for Worthing campaign.

At around 50 metres long and 10 metres wide, it was promoted at the time as the UK's largest street-art mural. It covered practically the entire street and became part artwork, part town-centre statement: Worthing was reopening.

It was a very different sort of public art.

No plinth. No gallery. No little plaque asking you not to touch it.

You could literally walk over it.

Cats. Lots of cats.

Of course, not every Horace creation needs a grand social message.

Sometimes Worthing simply needs a giant cat.

Horace's work ranges from recognisable stencil portraiture to brightly coloured pop art, birds, animals and deliberately playful pieces. Cats and seaside wildlife appear repeatedly, and the blue circle of cats remains one of the more wonderfully peculiar examples documented around town.

There have been works around High Street, Portland Road, Prospect Place and Montague Street, as well as paintings for local businesses and charities.

The RSPCA's Worthing shop even received a Horace dog mural. When that artwork was subsequently washed off the wall, Horace returned and created another one.

You have to admire the persistence.

Horace went beyond Worthing, too

The work eventually moved beyond simply decorating the town.

During the pandemic, Horace produced artwork celebrating NHS staff, including Angel Rainbow at St Richard's Hospital in Chichester. The hospital trust's annual report records the mural as recognising the work of intensive-care and clinical teams during COVID-19.

Another Horace artwork was installed at Worthing Hospital in memory of staff member Andrea Clements, featuring Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet beneath a night sky.

It demonstrated something that is easily forgotten when street art is casually described as "graffiti".

A wall can become a memorial.

A shutter can become a landmark.

And an otherwise entirely forgettable piece of brickwork can suddenly mean something to thousands of people who pass it.

The accidental Worthing art trail

Perhaps Horace's biggest contribution isn't any individual painting at all.

It is what happened around them.

Worthing increasingly became somewhere in which people actually looked for street art.

Horace helped encourage other artists to paint in the town. After discovering through the Portland Road project that the council was receptive to street art, he told one local writer that artists began being invited to decorate previously unattractive construction hoardings.

The result was effectively an informal outdoor gallery.

And unlike a conventional gallery, you don't need to plan a visit.

You discover it while buying milk.

Or walking to work.

Or going to the pub.

Or taking a shortcut and suddenly discovering Billy Idol looking down at you.

One of Horace's own more recent posts even noted that visiting foreign students were apparently using one of his Worthing murals as a landmark for finding their way around town.

That might be one of the nicest measures of public art's success.

When people stop saying, "Where is the painting?"

…and start saying, "Turn left at the painting."

Worthing's Banksy? Not quite — and perhaps that's better

Horace has repeatedly been dubbed "Worthing's own Banksy", including by local cultural organisations.

The comparison is obvious: anonymity, stencils, walls and the occasional mischievous joke.

But Horace's work has developed a character that feels distinctly local.

It celebrates Worthing people. It references Worthing history. It uses Worthing buildings as its canvas and frequently incorporates exactly the sort of humour that works best when you actually know the town.

Even the pseudonym itself is a private joke shared with generations of Worthing residents.

And Horace hasn't disappeared. His social accounts were still documenting work in Worthing in late 2025, including new and revisited pieces around the town.

A town with slightly less boring walls

Public art does not need everybody to agree that it is brilliant.

That's probably part of the point.

Some Horace pieces have vanished. Others have been painted over, altered or removed. New ones appear. Businesses change. Walls are redeveloped.

Street art is temporary by nature.

But over the past several years, Horace has done something rather unusual.

He has created dozens of tiny pieces of shared Worthing culture.

People give directions using them. Photograph them. Debate them. Remember ones that have disappeared. Children notice them. Visitors hunt them down. Residents recognise the style before they notice the signature.

And in a town containing an awful lot of brick walls, electrical boxes, shutters and back alleys, Horace has repeatedly looked at the same thing the rest of us walk past every day and apparently thought:

That needs a cat on it.

Worthing is probably a little better for it.