Tale of a Lavender Street resident.

A glimpse of the lives of working people in Brighton before and during the second world war.

Part of the old Lavender Street.

Ron was born around 1925 and spent a 'poor but happy' childhood in Lavender Street. His father worked for the Parks Department on a casual basis and income was erratic and weather dependent. They were often so poor that his mother would pawn his Sunday suit during the week hoping to redeem it in time for Sunday school the next weekend. If she failed, he would be sent off to spend the day on the beach instead. 

They moved to Sloane Street (now demolished) between the corporation yard (now the telephone exchange) and the primary school. When his mother got behind with the rent, the bailiffs were sent in and the house was boarded up while Ron was at school and his mother out at work. On returning home she borrowed a hammer from a neighbour and got Ron to climb over the back wall and break in. They settled themselves into the house again. This happened more than once.

During the war, Ron’s mother had a job painting bridges on the railway. Ron would have been around 15 when a string of bombs hit Kemp Town and the area was badly damaged. A girl who Ron was keen on was killed at the baker’s shop where she worked. He joined the army and, as a very tall and imposing soldier, was always put on guard duty. He told the story of guarding the entrance to the railway station on Trafalgar Street with a rifle with no ammunition and a wobbly bayonet. When an officer came down the dark stairs, Ron challenged him with the customary ‘Halt! Who goes there!” only to find his bayonet had fallen out of his rifle.

Ron went on to join the sweep across Europe into Germany after the Normandy invasion.

In peacetime he worked as a butcher at Sainsbury’s in Portslade for many years until a heart attack and by-pass surgery slowed him down and eventually he retired. He had an allotment after the war, first on Whitehawk Hill Road and then when the site was cleared to build the Catholic School there, he was moved to the Whitehawk allotment site. He spent a couple of hours every day on his allotment plot in all weathers, 'keeping out from under his wife's feet'  until he could no longer climb the steep hill to it. He died in 2015.

Contributed by Andrew Doig.

The new memorial at the Chattri

 

To the left of this photo is the memorial, unveiled September 2010, which displays the names of 53 Indian soldiers who died while hospitalised in Brighton during the period 1914-15. The last Indian soldier left Brighton in 1916. The original intentions of the then Mayor of Brighton, and prime instigator of the Chattri, Sir John Otter, have therefore been finally realised, thanks to the efforts of the Commonwealth Graves Commission.

Commencing in 1951, the British Legion organised an annual pilgrimage and memorial Service at the Chattri. This continued until 1999 when  the Legion discontinued it, citing old age and declining numbers of attendees. Hearing of this, Davinder Dhillon, a local Sikh teacher, approached the Legion with a view to resurrecting the event and under his stewardship the ceremony has been held annually on the second Sunday in June since 2000. The next service is on Sunday, 12th June 2011. Attendees come from as far away as Bradford. All are welcome.

"Oh what a lovely war" ~ ending

Filmed in Sheepcote Valley from a helicopter before the days of "steadicams" and CGI. All crosses planted by hand.

Hanningtons, 29th.November 1940

Only four bombs in all fell within the area of the Old Town: two on the seafront near Grand Junction Road; one in Ship Street where Dukes Lane is now; and one in front of Hanningtons, with the results shown here. By contrast, throughout the war, the Kingscliffe area of Brighton received about thirty hits. 

The same corner today (but no longer Hanningtons):-

Albion Hill revisited

This is a recap on the earlier post Albion Hill, September 1940.

September 1940:-

September 2010, looking towards the corner of Belgrave Street:-

The church is now in the same alignment relative to the distant skyline. The nearest house to the corner is no.16. It appears house numbers 17, 18, 19 Albion Hill were never rebuilt; part of the space being taken up with a planted area. There has been redevelopment across the bottom of the hill and the lower part of St. Bartholomews is obscured by the Phoenix building in Richmond Place. 

St. Nicholas Churchyard

 70 years ago St.Nicholas churchyard was  crammed with a century's worth of stone memorials of every shape and size, which must have made maintenance difficult, and certainly, during the war years, it became completely overgrown. At least it was enjoyed by the neighbourhood children for whom it became a jungle paradise  in which paths could be blazed and camps made.

Then in 1951 Brighton Council cleared most of the memorials away, stacking tombstones against the churchyard walls and retaining in position only those deemed of special local interest. This resulted in the garden space we enjoy now. The research into the tombs was, however, probably fairly cursory at the time.

There had also been an earlier clearance in the 1870's, so with the passage of time the details and stories of many of those interred at the site had been lost. In recent years work has been undertaken to rediscover information about those commemorated and the tales which accompany them. Gratifyingly the results of this work can now be followed in a new online gazetteer, The Brighton Mortiquarian.

Albion Hill, September 1940

Terraced houses such as these, with gardens too small to accomodate Anderson shelters would still have been awaiting the alternative Morrisons when, inconsiderately, as the Blitz intensified, the bombs began to fall. The only protection was to be found in the cupboard under the stairs, the staircase being reckoned the strongest part of the house. Although Lord HawHaw threatened Brighton on a least one occasion it was probably never a prime target, more the recipient of left-over bombs from enemy aircraft  returning from London; or bombs jettisoned at the first sight of land by over-eager pilots anxious to get home to tea, or whatever the German equivalent was in those days.

I have spent some time trying to decide if the modern photo is of exactly the same spot. Different cameras yield different perspectives which can be misleading, and there has been much rebuilding, thankfully in sympathetic styles. I think it is clinched by what appears to be identical chimney stacks near the centre of both pictures: and the house numbering; the second house from the corner being no. 48 and the digit  "8" being also discernible in the 1940 photo.

70 years ago today

Just a couple of months into the Blitz, on 14th September 1940 at 3.30 pm, a lone German plane dropped a bomb in Kemptown which killed 4 adults and 2 children in the Odeon cinema and 49 people in the surrounding area. This turned out to be the worst single attack throughout the war which finally cost the lives of 198 residents. 

The cinema was rebuilt but, after periods of use as a bingo hall and then a social centre, was finally demolished in 1986 and replaced with the present block of flats.

Down Terrace

"Down Terrace" is the name of a low-budget, prize-winning, debut feature film from Brighton Director Ben Wheatley who has previously been known for animated shorts. The film, a darkly humorous crime drama, has been variously referred to as: "Brighton Rock reworked in the style of The Royle Family"; "Shallow Grave as if written by Ricky Gervais"; "Ken Loach meets the Sopranos",  and "A crime thriller directed by Mike Leigh". What more can one ask? It is being screened at the Duke of Yorks on the 15th & 16th August.

The film, starring a host of British comedy talent is set almost entirely in a property in Down Terrace, Brighton which is an otherwise unremarkable street, council-built between the wars, that runs from Queens Park Road to Freshfield Road.

However, it was once before in the news for grimmer reasons.  In 1943, one of the houses received a direct hit from a German bomb:-