Peoples Stories - Bevendean History Project
Leisure and Playing Out in and around Bevendean
Mick Short:
“We played every game imaginable. It’s interesting that on the television now there’s a programme about The Three Musketeers, because a favourite game of ours was sword fighting. We only used sticks you know and I found a straight stick in the hedge and pulled it out and that was my sword. But yeah from the age of ten onwards I used to wander the hills with a satchel of some kind on my back which carried a potato, a screw of tea, a screw of sugar and a bottle of water, and attached to the satchel was a tin kettle and a box of matches, we could go anywhere. You could find enough dry wood to light a fire and boil the kettle and make tea and drink it from your mug. Then you put the potato in the embers and let it cook and eat it, charred skin and everything. It wasn’t uncommon, lots of kids used to do that and you’d be gone all day on a Saturday”.
Robert Brown:
“We used to go into the woods and play. I smoked my first cigarette at the age of 6 and burnt my mouth because I put the wrong end into my mouth; I thought it was a toy sweet. We used to go up into the fields especially the corn field and when all the straw was cut we used to get the straw together and jump in it. We would fight and roll in the straw and be absolute idiots. It was a very free time, everybody knew everybody because it was a new estate with new people and everybody spoke to everybody. The neighbours would stand talking across the fences or bushes. It’s not like that now; you never really know who your neighbours are. At school it said good fences make good neighbours, but now sometimes the fences isolate people as well”.
Stephen Gorringe:
“At the end of Heath Hill Avenue, there is a football pitch that wasn’t there when I was a kid. It was built using the ash from the power station at Portslade. When they were in the middle of filling the valley to make a level playing field, my dad decided it would be a good place to dispose of one of his old cars. It took quite a lot of shoveling to bury a car but I don’t think anyone was the wiser”.
Margaret Gorringe:
“We used to play outside quite safely, and there was no problem with playing out with all the other children. There was never any trouble, the kids didn’t fight very often, and the safest part was that we knew all the people living here, because nobody moved much. People stayed in the same place which made it safer, and they all knew your parents, so if you got into mischief you were told off. We used to go in the cornfield and over the bank, finding lizards and slow worms, and down into the woods where the chalk mines were”.
Violet Bradford:
“We used to walk over to the back of Falmer to what they called the 'Three Gate Woods'. There's a dew pond over there somewhere too. The boy over the road and his friend, used to go camping there at night, and they had no fears at all. They used to take a primus and a tent and sausages, beans and tea and drink lemonade and their parents were quite happy for them to go over there”.
David Ide:
“The woods and the fields were our home, unless Farmer West caught us by the dams, but we used to run before he could catch us. There was no fear about playing out, and we played football in the street, although we lived on the bus route, traffic wasn’t what it is today. We used to use the school playing field for a game of football. At the end of Heath Hill Avenue there used to be a horse’s field, which was at the same level as the road. They filled in the end of Heath Hill Avenue but you wouldn’t know now, as it was raised fifty to sixty feet above the horse’s field. It then became our home, Lower Bevendean football pitch”.
“We played every game imaginable. It’s interesting that on the television now there’s a programme about The Three Musketeers, because a favourite game of ours was sword fighting. We only used sticks you know and I found a straight stick in the hedge and pulled it out and that was my sword. But yeah from the age of ten onwards I used to wander the hills with a satchel of some kind on my back which carried a potato, a screw of tea, a screw of sugar and a bottle of water, and attached to the satchel was a tin kettle and a box of matches, we could go anywhere. You could find enough dry wood to light a fire and boil the kettle and make tea and drink it from your mug. Then you put the potato in the embers and let it cook and eat it, charred skin and everything. It wasn’t uncommon, lots of kids used to do that and you’d be gone all day on a Saturday”.
Robert Brown:
“We used to go into the woods and play. I smoked my first cigarette at the age of 6 and burnt my mouth because I put the wrong end into my mouth; I thought it was a toy sweet. We used to go up into the fields especially the corn field and when all the straw was cut we used to get the straw together and jump in it. We would fight and roll in the straw and be absolute idiots. It was a very free time, everybody knew everybody because it was a new estate with new people and everybody spoke to everybody. The neighbours would stand talking across the fences or bushes. It’s not like that now; you never really know who your neighbours are. At school it said good fences make good neighbours, but now sometimes the fences isolate people as well”.
Stephen Gorringe:
“At the end of Heath Hill Avenue, there is a football pitch that wasn’t there when I was a kid. It was built using the ash from the power station at Portslade. When they were in the middle of filling the valley to make a level playing field, my dad decided it would be a good place to dispose of one of his old cars. It took quite a lot of shoveling to bury a car but I don’t think anyone was the wiser”.
Margaret Gorringe:
“We used to play outside quite safely, and there was no problem with playing out with all the other children. There was never any trouble, the kids didn’t fight very often, and the safest part was that we knew all the people living here, because nobody moved much. People stayed in the same place which made it safer, and they all knew your parents, so if you got into mischief you were told off. We used to go in the cornfield and over the bank, finding lizards and slow worms, and down into the woods where the chalk mines were”.
Violet Bradford:
“We used to walk over to the back of Falmer to what they called the 'Three Gate Woods'. There's a dew pond over there somewhere too. The boy over the road and his friend, used to go camping there at night, and they had no fears at all. They used to take a primus and a tent and sausages, beans and tea and drink lemonade and their parents were quite happy for them to go over there”.
David Ide:
“The woods and the fields were our home, unless Farmer West caught us by the dams, but we used to run before he could catch us. There was no fear about playing out, and we played football in the street, although we lived on the bus route, traffic wasn’t what it is today. We used to use the school playing field for a game of football. At the end of Heath Hill Avenue there used to be a horse’s field, which was at the same level as the road. They filled in the end of Heath Hill Avenue but you wouldn’t know now, as it was raised fifty to sixty feet above the horse’s field. It then became our home, Lower Bevendean football pitch”.
24 May 2013
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