Preston, East Sussex

how has Patcham changed?

I was born in Wilmington Way Patcham in 1938. I remember it to be high up on the South Downs.
Has anyone posted up to date pictures of Patcham on the net, please.  I left in about 1942, and would like to know what it looks like now.

Yards from home!

I grew up in Hove in the 1950s in Connaught Terrace, a small, seemingly insignificant road of terraced houses just around the corner from this church. The structure behind the church spire in this photo is a gas holder. The streets where I and my friends played are directly behind it. My mother used to take my baby sister and I... [more]

Wrestling and the fire.

My earliest memories of the old Hove Town Hall are of a massively impressive red brick building opposite which was a 'Gamleys' toy shop to which I'd be taken by my mother whenever we had enough money!
There used to be professional wrestling bouts held there (the Town Hall, not the toy shop!) and I can recall being taken to see... [more]

St, Johns choir

Things are a little hazy, but, I think the year is about right, providing that this is the church on the Church Road before the gardens going towards Brighton. I used to sing in the choir under the direction of the Organist and Choir master Mr. Clifford Roberts, who also tried to teach me to play piano from reading music, but... [more]

Day out shopping.

As a child during the 1970s I used to live in Burgess Hill (10 miles away) with my parents and younger brother David. I remember being very small and my mother taking us to Brighton on the stagecoach bus with our next door neighbours. Both women loved to shop and us four children had to go along for the ride.
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growing up in World War II

I was born to Jewish parents whom had a ladies clothes shop in Kensington Gardens (The Lanes) my Father died in 1941, My Mother now a very young widow decided she wanted us all to live above the shop because of bombs etc, it had 2 rooms upstairs which we used as bedrooms, a small... [more]

Teacher Training College

The building in the corner was Brighton Teacher Training College. The building at right angles in the distance was a hotel.

My mother Florence Starkey was studying in the Teacher Training College top floor and looked out of the window across the angle into the side window of the curved bay hotel window to see a woman hovering strangely in... [more]

Crescent Road

We moved to Brighton in 1959 and my parents Pat and Jim Webb bought a house here after spending their honeymoon here (lived in Dulwich).   I remember when there were very few cars parked in the road and we could always play safely out on the street.  Nowadays cars are parked top to tail in both directions!   We lived at no... [more]