Magham Down Red Lion And Post Office

A Memory of Magham Down.

My family moved to Magham Down in December 1953, when I was nearly 5.  

The Red Lion was run by the Mounsey family.  The shop and post office was run by Joyce Russell.  In the shop were sweets in large glass jars, many made by Angear's of Herstmonceux.  They were weighed out and sold by the quarter, in white paper bags.  The shop was in the main part of the house, but the post office was separate, in an added single-storey building.  Miss Russell hated opening the post office, and it took some courage for a small child to have to ask for stamps.  But when I got older, she used to keep the commemoratives for me.  In 1966 she was so cross with "strangers" coming in the buy the World Cup overprinted stamps, she bought her entire stock and kept them for her regulars.  She was a keen swimmer, swimming in the sea all year round, and an avid tennis fan.  To call in the shop when Wimbledon was on was to risk serious displeasure, but again, when I was older, I would get off the school bus at 4.45, call out as I went into the shop to let her know it was only me, and join her in from of the tv until transmission ended at about 5.15.

The bus service along the main road was the No. 15, operated jointly by Southdown (pale green) and Maidstone & District (dark green).  The buses ran between Eastbourne and Bexhill, every hour in the winter and every half hour in the summer, with extra school buses.  A child's fare into Hailsham was 3d.  There was no bus shelter initially, but one was constructed on the Post Office side with funds originally collected for a new village hall which was never built.