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Sidlesham memories

Here are memories of Sidlesham and the local area. You can start now: Add your own Memory of Sidlesham or a Sidlesham photo.

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!

Memories of West Sussex

Church Farm Caravan Site 1975-1979

The Entrance to Church Farm c1965
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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

The Entrance to Church Farm c1965
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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.

East Beach c1955
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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

The Entrance to Church Farm c1965
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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

I Fell in Love With Pagam in 2008

East Beach c1955
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I fell in love with Pagham last year, I would move there tomorow if I could, I love the place! We came upon it by looking for somewhere to hire for a week of relaxation and thanks to good old Daltons Weekly we were able to hire a bungalow on Pagham beach, the extra benefit being the owner allows well-behaved dogs. So we stayed there on peaceful Pagam beach and had the most lovely time, the bungalow we hire is on West Front Road, smack bang next to the nature reserve. We walk for miles and in the evening sit on the decking facing the sea, it's just beautiful. I love walking along looking at all the bungalows, there are so many, all in one huge long row along the beach. A lot of them have been beautifully modernised, and some of them still have their old character, even with the original railway carriages attached or sitting idle on the back lawns, it's fasinating. When it's very windy in Pagham... Read more

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