Reighton. Sea View Store.

A Memory of Reighton.

I lived at Reighton Gap from early 1948 to 1951. The picture of the shop brings back many memories as I worked in it  aged 11 during the summer school holidays.
My jobs were to handle the dirty jobs, handling of potatoes, paraffin, and fetch the soft drinks from the back of the store. It was a very busy cafe in summer so I had to also wash up and dry the dishes, my reward was 2 meals a day and 7/6 per week pay, I worked 7 days a week 6 am to 9 pm.  The 7/6 helped my mother pay half of the weekly rent to live in a bus called "Linga Longa", no water, no fire, just a bus shell, it was a hard life.  The 2 meals a day were a blessing as we often had no food.  The store was only open from 11am to 1pm in winter during the week. Groceries had to be brought from Filey via walking along the sands in both directions.  The owners of the store in those days were Arthur and Joan Russell, young people, about 25 years old.  Arthur was a professional boxer as he had cups from it, he was either bantam or feather weight.  Her parents lived in the house immediately on top of the hill to the quarry, they were Mr and Mrs Jack Chambers.  He worked at the quarry driving a dumpster, owned by Steven Toulson and Son of West Ayton.  The foreman of the quarry was Mr Clubley, Frank Black drove the old excavator, also Bill Scouson, both from Hunmanby.  Stan Bell was also another driver.  The farm in those days was owned by the Bayes family.
Reighton Gap was a wild, cold place in winter, and the long walk to Speeton school was no fun either.  Memories of a long time ago.  I visited the place in 2006 and although I can still locate the 3 places I lived in, now demolished, Reighton Gap is just not the place it was, and it never was much, but for a child like myself a wonderful free playground.  Frank Archer.