Selsey
Selsey photos
Displaying the first of 15 old photos of Selsey. View all Selsey photos
Selsey maps
Historic maps of Selsey and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Selsey maps
Selsey area books
Displaying 1 of 19 books about Selsey and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Selsey
Displaying a selection of personal
memories of Selsey.
Add your memory of Selsey
or of a photo of Selsey.
SELSEY
I spent several holidays in a chalet with long verandah which was one of the first on the right just after a burnt out house and just before the caravans started in Mill Lane during the late 1940s and early 1950s. I remember getting off the bus from Chichester with all our luggage and there were an assortment of men with bicycles with various trailers attached and for a small fee cases and bags were loaded on and all the holiday makers followed on foot till each was taken to their holiday 'home'. We were always the first to be offloaded and I remember seeing the man cycling furiously back to the bus stop a bit later to try and catch the next load of holiday makers as they disembarked. In the 1960s when I had children of my own and we all had cars, the walk along Mill Lane was not so enjoyable as cars seemed to dash each way with scant regard to pedestrians. Both bus... Read more
The Caravan Shop
I can remember the shop well, both my grandparants had caravans on Mr Wakley's old site (the first gate on the left past the windmill). If the Greenaways shop (that was an old bus parked by the windmill) was shut it meant walking the extra bit to the caravan shop. I still have a photo taken by Selsey Photographic, Millfield Road (phone SELSEY 2604) of myself aged 13 with a shopping bag walking to the shop taken in 1960, when the our caravans were moved up to Ramparts, a beach-side site, further along West Beach, from about 1953. My Auntie Lou used to live in Mill Cottage for about 10 years, before moving to 115 High Street, Selsey.
West Sussex memories
Atkins Charity Football Match at Sidlesham FC
Driving through Sidlesham , I noticed the village football club had floodlights. My son Steven was looking for a ground for a Charity Football Match, as we were staying at our chalet at Church Farm Holiday Village. I suggested that we should look at the ground, having ruled out Selsey in the meantime. Being impressed at what we saw, we asked if the chairman was at the match. It turned out that he came from Dartford, our home town! Small world isn't it! We all got well after that and Company Charity Day raise over 2000 for The Treehouse Charity . Some of the directors stayed at the Crab & Lobster and were very impressed, and wanted to know when the next charity day would be, and it must be in Sidlesham!
Church Farm Caravan Site 1975-1979
I have just booked a holiday to Church Farm Caravan Site for May 2011 and the reason for this is I used to holiday there every year from 1975 to 1979. My parents had a caravan on the Saltings I think it was number 11. We used to driver there in my dad's Ford Zephyr car and I can still remember the registration and the long front seats in red plastic made to look like leather. Our caravan had candles for lights which you lit with matches and blew out at bedtime, it had no loo and I remember all the spiders lurking in the communal toilet at the end of the field. We used to have a bucket to pee in through the night and I always used to laugh when my dad put the tea cosy on his head when he made the tea in the mornings. We collected water from a big tap and the gas man came around with a bottle when you ran out. It... Read more
Head Receptionist ~ Church Farm
I can see the roof of my parents' old house in the background on this pic. I used the be the Head Receptionist at Church Farm Holiday Park, just behind the old Clubhouse from 1983 - 1987. I worked with Joyce Aldridge in the beginning, Alan & Nancy & their daughter Julie, Bill, Cocker, Buster & old Tom the drunken gas man. I was the tall blond girl in the office. I lived on site with my husband in Ballast Hole. Many a night was spent propping up the bar in the club and crawling into work the next morning ready for all the holiday makers stampeding in from Essex and London...those were the days!)
I made some wonderful friends like Doreen Wood - who took over from me when I left. Doreen sadly passed away a few years ago now and I miss her still...
I got married at St.Thomas a Beckett's Church up the lane in 1986 - but the rat abandoned me in Australia 23... Read more
Peter Tayman ~ In Loving Memory...and Also A Haunted House.
My parents bought an old railway carriage bungalow at 66, East Front Rd, on Pagham Beach in the early 1990's. The place was a total dump, so they burned it down on the beach! This was allowed by Council back then, if below the tide line - what a waste of the antique railway carriages that were hidden inside layers of plywood and plaster boards! We did save some of the old fittings, but they are since lost.
They built an ugly brick L-shaped modern bungalow with too many steps, that was always damp on one side, even though the footings were massively deep & the damp course was fine! I know, because I helped build that house and even built a retaining wall that is still standing, or it was the last time I looked and that was in 2004. Not bad for a female Undertaker!
My Dad found a whole heap of Molotov cocktail type bombs buried under the old footings which were left... Read more
Pagham Reviewed Opinion
I spent my teen years during the late 1970s and early 1980s at Church Farm Caravan Site. We spent our days wandering the site or walking to the Crab and Lobster Pub at Sidlesham. That was before the harbour wall was put in, and you would have to check the tide times or risk a very long return journey. My brother Robert spent far more time at Pagham than I did, thinking it was a pretty uncool place to be until I met Tony Hadley, who was to become the lead singer of Spandau Ballet. His parents had a caravan on the site. My brother was very good friends with the Fox brothers, Will, Joe and Jim, who resided at Millstone Cottage with their parents, Shirley and Frank, and my mum used to caretake their house and sons! when Shirley and Frank went to Spain. My mum used to rent a bungalow on the beach during the winter months and eventually moved to Pagham permanently.
Robert my brother also decided... Read more
