My parents came from London and I spent some of my early years travelling between Brighton and London.  My mum and dad stayed with my dad’s parents and I was born at the Brighton General Hospital in Elm Grove, Brighton.  My father was born in 1920.

My nan and granddad lived in Mafeking Road and my dad walked along Mafeking Road and over Tenantry Down Road to the hospital in Elm Grove.  My nan and granddad had also moved from London because my nan suffered from asthma.  My granddad was a higher-grade postman and he was able to swap from London to Brighton.  Mafeking Road was just being built then and they managed to buy their house for £100.

When my parents first came from London, they just had a couple of rooms in a house in Ewhurst Road and the rooms faced uphill towards Mafeking Road.
Later we moved from Ewhurst Road to 100 Lyminster Avenue in Hollingbury.  Brighton Council had just built the houses and my mum and dad had the upstairs flat, I do not know who lived downstairs.

We moved to 22 Twyford Road in Coldean in 1954, when I was 6 years old and just starting school and we were the first people to live in the house.  The northern end of Coldean village was being built in 1954 and 1955.

I can remember that we had a cement mixer in the garden.  I had thought it was going to be left in our garden for me to play with but it got moved to Hawkhurst Road.

My first school was Coldean with Mr. Burrows as the head master and Mr Bowyer as deputy. Mr Bowyer unfortunately had a heart attack and died at an early age and a cherry tree was planted in memory of him.  I have some photographs which my parents had of the planting of a cherry tree in his memory.

The one thing that stands out in my mind was that when we went to Coldean School the dew pond was open in the top part of the field and was always quite full and we would get tadpoles and bring them home.  I see that it is fenced off and looks slightly over grown, there used to be a lot of wild life there and it was a well-kept pond in the school grounds.  I suppose that it is shut off due to health and safety requirements.


Church Parade in the late 1950s with Fr Cyril Bess presiding. Ian Ginn is on the extreme right of the picture.

I joined the 18th Brighton Cubs on 10 December 1957 and the scouts on March 1960 and remember fondly Mr Elms (Chill) and Mr. Nickerson (Skip).


Wolf Cub Enrolment Card for Ian Ginn.

I was also, a member of the St. Mary Magdalen Church Choir and my mother belonged to the “Young Wives Group” at the church.
I remember that when I was in the church choir, I was on a stage at the back of the church but the stage is no longer there.  The stage was removed when the new entrance, was built in 1971 at the same time as the hall was built.  When the hall was built it was thought that activities should go on in the hall rather than the church.

The church organ was on the right hand side of the stage against the wall with the choir sitting on rows of chairs on the rest of the stage at the back of the church.  The organ was a pipe organ but was sold and replaced by one that came from Bevendean when we thought that the church there had been closed in 2007.

I also remember that there were doors which closed in front of the altar.  However, these were removed when a new floor was installed in 2017.
I attended the Consecration Service held on 22 July 2022 for St Mary Magdalen Church and bought a church magazine.

Different people had the shops in Beatty Avenue, Arthur Holder had the Butchers shop, Stanley Morris had the Grocer’s shop, Mr Bernard Olver was the chemist, he was a churchwarden at St Mary Magdalen Church for a while.  I remember his daughter who was the same age as my brother, she died a little while ago, at a young age.  She was horse mad and had a horse on the slope at the back of the shops.

Then there was the Confectioners and the Post Office, run by Mr. Hobday, next to that down the slope was the doctor’s surgery.  The doctor’s surgery is now in New Larchwood.  Later two more shops were built, next to the surgery, one was the hairdressers and the other was a greengrocer.

I remember that the doctor’s surgery had a great big fish tank in the window but you could not see anything because it was all always green.  A little lady, Mrs Farmer, used to do the cleaning in there and whenever you went in there you had to walk over sheets of paper, you never saw the floor in its natural state it always had newspaper on it.

My father was on the Coldean Self-Build Housing Association and in 1962 we moved to Selba Drive in Moulsecoomb.  He also founded the Coldean Community Association along with, l recall, Mr Alfred Hutchings.

We lived in a council house and my dad worked on the self-build scheme at Selba Drive, which took about 30 months to build, and that is at the back of Moulsecoomb.

Although it was a Coldean Self Build Association the bungalows were built in Selba Drive.  The men involved all came from Coldean, I do remember one abnormality and I went to the Town Hall with my dad to sort things out.  The problem was because of a Mr and Mrs Lyons, who did not have any children.  Although Mr Lyons did not come from Coldean his wife Kath lived at the bottom of Coldean Lane so the council made an exception to the rule and Kath and her husband joined the self-build scheme because they needed a plumber.  The man behind many of the self-build schemes in Brighton was Councillor Desmond Manton.

Pearl Brown and Douglas lived next door to my mum and dad in Selba Drive, Pearl lived at number 18 and my parents were at number 20.  Douglas was an ambulance driver and had a massive heart attack and was the first person to have open heart surgery at Brighton.  They were great neighbours for my mum and dad.  Pearl had a sister who lived in Bevendean Crescent.

Pearl may have told you that they found a hand grenade which exploded and killed one child and she had one leg which was very thin and so she would wear long dresses or trousers.

I was just changing schools when we moved to Selba Drive and went to Stanmer School, although I think we still lived in Coldean for a year and that was my excuse to get a push bike to go to Stanmer School from Coldean.  My father was one of the last people to move into Selba Drive and I think I was then 12.

Selba Drive took about 31 months to build and the bungalows cost £1,700 each, when they were finished.  My parents’ house was the most expensive along with a chap called Len Early because they both had Parque flooring in the hall and the lounge whereas everyone else just had Marley tiles put down on the floor.

I remember my mother saying to my father, you spent all that money on the floors, but would not buy me a floor polisher.

The buildings in Selba Drive were bungalows with a small storeroom underneath because of the slope of the land.  This was on the west side of Selba Drive, while on the east side the bungalows had garages built underneath.

Our claim to fame is that we were the first family in Selba Drive to have two cars, my fathers was in the garage as he worked in London during the week and I had a car parked on the side of the road.

I was part of a self-build in Uplands Road at Hollingdean and I think I left Selba Drive when I was about 24 or 25.  The self-build scheme in Uplands Road was run by Brighton Council.  It was quite a good scheme in as much as they allocated us the land, but we did not have to pay for it until all the houses were finished then we could take out a mortgage with the council.  We were there for a peppercorn rent to make it legal.  We had a monthly draw of money from the council to pay for the materials that had been purchased.  We all paid subs each month and when the first person moved in, they paid a suitable rent for the property, whether it was a 3 or 4 bedroomed house, you were building.

The more people who moved in the less it cost you to build because you were paying rent back on your interest as well as using that money to buy other materials.  The scheme in Uplands Road took about 19 months to complete.

To me Coldean will always be home and several times l have moved back and still keep my house in Standean Close, which is currently rented out.  I would describe Coldean as being a rural area it was always very nice.  Mr Brown was the school caretaker; he was a jolly fella who had the Parquet floors swept with damp sawdust.  I can always remember the smell of that.  He always walked with a bit of a wobble as if he had a bad leg and I think that he would have been in his 40s, he always had a grey boiler suite on.  Coal for the school boiler was delivered from a lorry which had a conveyor belt to deliver the coal down into the boiler room under the school canteen.  Ash from the boiler was carried out by hand.

Mr Brown did not live in the house built in the ground of the school; he lived at 84 Beatty Avenue a couple of doors along from the Hutchins who lived at 74.  His back garden looked down onto the school grounds, the house in the school grounds was quite a new addition compared to the rest of the estate.

I have looked at the Bevendean History Website and what caught my eye was the section on the Bates Estate.  When my mum came from London, after her mother died, she lived with an auntie.  She used to go to the Girl Guides held along the Lewes Road and the Guide leader at the time was Bessy Bates who was part of the Bates family.  They had a large orchard, where there is now an estate of flats.  It is a crying shame that there are flats where there used to be lots of lovely apples.  In later years I went out with her daughter Evelyn Longley, for a while, who was part of the Bates family who lived in Coldean Lane.

When I took the girl home it turned out that her mum was my mothers guide leader.  Bessy Bates married Bill Longley and they had one of the private houses along Coldean Lane.

We used to go off into the woods and fields when I lived at Coldean.  We had posh bikes for going to school.  However together with a friend of mine we had what we called track bikes.  These were made up from old bikes using an old frame and wheels and tyres and we would cycle through the woods and come home covered in mud.  If you came home with more mud than anyone else it meant that you had had a good time.  It was not allowed because the park wardens used to drive round the woods in his little Land Rover.  When he came round, we would hide and then come out and carry on when he had gone.

Everyone thinks this is a new thing, but we were doing this in the 1960s.  The bikes were made up from spare parts.  We went to Mr. Trotman who lived in George Street in Brighton and he had old bikes there probably bikes which had been traded in.  The bikes were disabled so they could not be ridden, perhaps the chain had been removed or the tyres were flat, so he would let you take these bikes home for spare parts.

I remember the two houses at the corner of Beatty Avenue and Hawkhurst Road which are on an angle opposite the shops.  Mr Elms who was our scout leader lived in the lefthand house nearest Hawkhurst Road.  The two houses have now been faced with bricks, they originally had what looked like a concrete facing, like you get with concrete sectional garages.  I think that the panels were made from the clinker or ash created when coke was being made.  They were originally a concrete slab construction and I think that now they have had fitted with insulation over the concrete and then faced with bricks to bring the U values up.

Another thing I remember about being in the cubs was if you were the cub of the month, you would take the flag home on Friday evening and clean the leaping wolf on the top of the flag pole.  Then once a month on the Sunday when it was church parade we met outside the shops and the cubs and scouts would walk down the slope to Selham Drive and then to the church.  It was quite an honour to take the flag home on a Friday night.  The leaping wolf was the symbol of the cubs.  Mr Nicholson, our cubs Skip, lived in the same style of house on the corner between Selham Drive and Beatty Avenue, there were two houses across the corner like at the junction of Beatty Avenue and Hawkhurst Road.

Mr Chill worked for a seed merchant and there were always flowers in front of his house.  He would sweep out the car once a week and throw the seed dust on the front garden and so he would have an array of flowers all year round.

There were allotments behind the houses in Park Road and Rushlake Road where Rushlake Close is today and we had an allotment there for quite a few years.  My father used to take us to the allotments in his homemade wheel barrow.  After church I went down in the wheel barrow with my dad and would meet my lifelong friend Graham Rumsey who lived in Park Road.  The only entrance I can remember to the allotments was at the top of the hill in Park Road.  There was a little entrance at the top just before the junction with Ridge View.

There are three new houses built there with oak cladding on the fronts, quite modern looking for the time.  I remember there were people up in arms about them saying they looked more like a cowboy’s den.  The houses had white bricks at the bottom and wooden cladding above where you would normally have had tiles hanging.  They were just long lengths of wood sliced out from the tree and they are still there as far as I am aware.  People complained that they looked like a shanty town.

Our garden at home had Raspberries and Gooseberry bushes in the back garden, all the vegetables were mainly grown on the allotment.

A few years before we moved from Coldean, the council took down one of the prefab houses in Rushlake Road and built a close of bungalows behind Park Road, that was the land for the original allotments in Coldean.

The allotments then moved to where they are now on Coldean Lane opposite the bottom of Hawkhurst Road, which was the site of the Menagerie Farm.  That is where the Coldean Horticultural Society operated from now.

The Mormon Church at the top of Park Road has not been a church for 20 odd years because it moved to the corner of the Lewes Road and Hollingdean Road near to Sainsbury and Saunders Park.  Plans have been approved to build two blocks of flats on the former church site.  Work started in 2022 and when completed will provide 12 flats.

Arthur West who was the last farmer in Coldean lived in the house nearest to Coldean Lane at the bottom of Park Road.  This was a detached house whereas the other houses in the road are semidetached.
The house on the corner of Rushlake Road and Park Road was also a detached house and that was owned by the managing director of Allen West (No. 12 Park Road).  In Coldean you could not get a very good signal, not that we had a television set while we lived there, but he had a very tall mast built in his back garden with an aerial on top.  He had two garages but I think that the people who live there now do not use them anymore.

I do not remember much about the farming in Coldean, except for going over the field when they were cutting the grass and the farmer put buckets of molasses on the grass, spreading it with brushes and layering the grass up in the summer time.

I remember that where there is a new block of flats in the centre of Coldean there used to be a park.  It was really just a piece of waste ground at the junction of Waldron Avenue and Beatty Avenue.  This is where New Larchwood was built which is a block of old peoples flats with a doctor’s surgery included.  Before the original Larchwood was built, there was just a rough piece of ground where we played cricket and there was a sand pit towards the Waldron Avenue end.  There was also a steam roller and an old lorry parked there, we would climb all over them and pretend that we were driving them and they were there for many years.  You would not be able to do that now because someone might slide off the roof and hurt themselves.

We had a routine every morning, our mother gave my brother and I one shilling. On our way to school, we would go into Morrison's and buy a long split loaf which was 11.5 pence and then go into the sweet shop and with our half penny buy two Harvey’s black jacks, which was our treat on the way to school.  On our way home at lunchtime we would call into Morrison's and pick up the loaf to take home with us.

An old single decker coach came round the estate twice a week.  All the seats had been taken out except for the driver’s seat and the one next to him and it was fitted out with racks for fruit and vegetables so it was effectively a mobile grocer and green grocers.  At the time Brooke Bond and Typhoo were giving away cards in the tea packets and the driver had a little rack for spare cards so that if you were missing a card, you could give him one you had two of in exchange for one you did not have.  He also sold tea, tins beans and other non-perishable goods.  But it created a bit of a dingdong because on alternate days the Coop came round in a big removal style lorry.  You went in the back where there was a little counter, my mum used to leave the book with her order and later the man would knock at the door and give her what she had ordered and tell her how much it was.  When she had paid him, he would sign her book.  They carried everything including ham, pieces of meat and so on, the lorry was effectively a travelling Coop store.  They had a bacon slicer and things like that, it was all very well laid out.

On a Friday the fish man came round and if you wanted him to call you put a plate in the window and he would come to the door so my mum could tell him what fish she wanted.  He would then go back to the van and bring the fish to the door.  This was wet fish for my mum to cook for us.

During the winter time the paraffin lady came round.  You would leave your cans by the front door and she would fill them up and bring them back and knock on the front door.  I remember now that my mother would give the lady the money and she would be given the change.  My mother had an old China plate that the lady would put the money on because it was all covered in paraffin.  My mother would then boil a kettle of water and pour it over the money to get rid of the smell of the paraffin.  The lady’s hands were wet with paraffin and must have been very sore.

For a new estate it was quite well covered for all amenities, there was, a doctors, butchers, the grocers and the chemist Mr Olver.

My dad along with Mr Hutchins who was quite well known at the church formed the Coldean Community Association.  They used to have dances on a Saturday night in the school junior hall and they also used to run the bingo on a Friday evening after the cubs had finished.  They would set up the tables and sort things out to get their bingo underway.

Saturday nights was the Community Association Dances, one night they had a problem when a load of teddy boys turned up to join the dancing at the school.  I think that the police were called and there was a bit about it in the local paper.

My wife tells me that I can remember my early life because I have always gone back to the area and can remember it all, whereas she initially came from Essex.  Her family moved to Horsham and then when I met her, Sue moved down to Brighton and moved in with me.  I was living in Standean Close when I met her.  I had bought some land at Newhaven and my dream was to do a self-build there.  When we finally got together, we built a house in Newhaven and lived there for 10 years.  I could not part with my house in Standean Close so it is rented out to a family.  If I sold it this would break my ties to Coldean.

I came back to Coldean for the Jubilee event and what caught my attention was that something said come and see about the history of Coldean.  The boards were set up in front of the church altar, I looked at the pictures and I could remember things as though it was yesterday.

The church was Consecrated on the 22nd July 2022 which is 67 years after it was dedicated.  The reason for the consecration was so that cremated remains may be legally buried in the grass area at the side of the church set aside for this purpose.  Someone in the past had buried ashes at the side of the church but now there is a much bigger area which can be used for this.

I can remember Fr Bess who was a portly gentleman and his wife who was always at his side whatever was going on and whatever was being done.  My mother was a good supporter of the church and my father too.  My mother went to the young wives group in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

My birthday being the first of April actually fell on the Easter Sunday one year and Mrs Goble who ran the Young Wives group made me a Simnel cake and converted it to a birthday cake.  I cannot remember the year. (Easter Sunday fell on the first of April in 1956).

From Coldean we moved to Moulsecoomb and for a few years I continued to go to Coldean church and was in the choir.

I then went to St Andrews for two reasons.  My father was in the choir at St Andrews when the first church was built and it seemed good to stand and sing where my father would have sung.  This would probably have been about 1964 or 1965, Fr Money was there at the time and so was Tony Pannett.  Tony Pannett unfortunately died a couple of years ago with Alzheimer’s.

Fr Money left Mrs Money when they moved to Worthing and met his new lady.  They moved up to the Isle of Skye and about two years later, he came back and died of cancer.  I see his daughter Jennie quite often; she goes to St Annes House Church in Lewes which was Fr Money's first church.
Fr. Tony Pannett was a lovely chap who lived in Bevendean Crescent, my mum and dad’s garden backed on to his garden.  I had a scooter for two years and I used to park it in his garage and sneak through the fence over a little waste ground to my mum and dad’s garden.  We went to a youth camp with Fr Tony at Lea Abbey.

There were just 2 churchwardens who stand out in my mind, one was Mr Gerald Henry Lodge, his wife was the organist of the church at Coldean.  He was the churchwarden from 1958 to 1961 and 1966 to 1968.  His daughter was in the choir.
Mr Charles Ernest Winder was the other church warden I remember, he was in office from 1959 to 1961 and 1962 to 1964.

I also remember Alfred Hutchings, Walter Ayling, Walter Stoner, Ronald Brown and Harry Olver.

My father was the treasurer for the church at St Andrews for a good many years.  My father and I built the path which goes up the side of the church to enable the vicar to come out of his garden through a gap in the hedge turn left and walk up the path to the side entrance towards the back of the church.

My wife used to work at Brighton University and she got to know one of the vicars who worked there quite well.  He lived in Bevendean Crescent, Fr Tony Pannett’s old house, this was Fr Colin Lawler.  When we were doing weddings at Falmer Church we used to draw lots because the organ was not electric.  The person who lost had to go upstairs and pump the organ bellows, we got half a crown for singing or pumping the bellows for the service.
I know the organ is electric now because the University have had their carol services there for the last couple of years.  I had a look up there and was disappointed to find that the hand to pump the bellows had gone.

I did an apprenticeship with SEEBOARD as an electrician and worked in Brighton or the local area.  That was my profession, but in my late 20s I went back to college and did a building construction course and then joined the post office which was just turning over to British Telecom.  I worked there for their building services department, building and designing and looking over the plans for new telephone exchanges.

I then went on as clerk of works when they were building like mad as the new electronic revolution was taking over.  When that was finished, I was not wanted any more so I took the golden shilling at the age of 50 and went to work at the Princess Royal Hospital for about 9 months as an electrician mainly on call out for the lifts and escalators.  Then I joined Anchor Housing where my job was as a surveyor.  I would go out to houses where disabled people wanted to live in their own home and design a lift or a walk-in shower or a wet room as it is now called.  I left them after a couple of years and went to work for Eastbourne Care Repair doing exactly the same thing.  That took me up until I was nearly 70, but in the mean time I was driving a minibus for the community transport in the Lewes area taking people to hospital.  I was involved with the Newhaven Youth Marching Band and they went out to various venues and they always had to hire a minibus and driver.  The organiser said one day if you put in for your test and get a licence then you can use the minibus and only pay for the diesel.  That is what I did and that was how I got involved with the marching band, I would drive the minibus for free and we only had to put diesel in it until I got to the age of 70.

To carry on driving I was required to take a test and get a new license, and because I was on Chemotherapy, I would have had to go for a special medical at Crawley costing about £500.  The Community Transport for the Lewes Area (CTLA) would not pay for it so my wife said I think that it is time to knock it on the head and so I stopped driving the minibus.

I enjoyed that; it was good with the kids they were always going to be cheeky.  They were a great crowd but like all these things they slowly dwindled until a couple of years ago they ceased their existence.  They did very well, we used to go to London on New Year’s Day, there were marching bands from all over England and bands from the States with their pompom girls, it was just amazing.

I am surprised that they built the Keep and the Ambulance station on Woollards Field because in the 1960s when we had a fair amount of rain that whole field was flooded and there is a stream running under there.  The water was up to 2 feet deep and flowed through the streets of Moulsecoomb down to the railway arch.

They bored down into the ground near the toilets, where the car wash is now and put in very large drainage pipes.

Moulsecoomb Place was used as a library before the present library was built.
Brighton University seems to be obliterating the town with their tower blocks and a large number of houses close to the Lewes Road are HMOs for students.

We had that problem in Standean Close with someone wanting to convert a house into an HMO.  Brighton Council threw out the application but the owners won an appeal in London and the house next door to mine is 6 bedrooms now and the garage underneath is a bedroom which is more than should be allowed in the Close.

We are being ridden over by the landlords who want to own HMOs, and the silly thing is that they do not pay Council Tax but they still get the bins emptied.  The council are well aware that no one is paying Council Tax, you would think that as a business they should pay business tax but this requires government approval which is not forthcoming.

I helped out for a while with the 12th Brighton Scouts which was attached to St Andrews Moulsecoomb.  We met in the long barn at the side of the tennis courts behind Moulsecoomb School.  The barn was our scout headquarters, Cyril Jansey was the scout master for a great many years and he was awarded the BEM in 2020 for services to Scouting in Brighton.  He lived at number 9 Wheatfield Way.  We had a half decker bus ex British Airways; the front half was a coach and the rear half was a double decker bus.  We ran that for many years to take the scouts out and about, we could not hire it out, but we would take various scout groups to camp.

They would make a donation when they got back from camp.  One year we took the bus up to Blackpool for the scout car races which was great fun.  Cyril’s wife said he would bankrupt their building company because if there was a choice between scouting or work scouting came first.

His BEM award was very well deserved for all he did for scouting in Brighton.

I think the Coldean Estate is a lovely estate because it cannot be made into a rat run, whichever way you go in you have to go out at the bottom again, so you do not get traffic driving through trying to get somewhere other than going up Coldean Lane.