My neighbours

In the QueenSpark Book Backyard Brighton Victor Henry Cox recalls his neighbours in Preeces Buildings during the 1920's.

Our neighbours stayed the same for years and I can still remember who lived in which house:

Nos. 1 & 2: The Bakery.

No. 3: The Lamberts with Alfie and his sister. We used to play together, Alfie and I, and we played a silly little game one day with canes and arrows. Unfortunately we had the bright idea of buying a pack of needles and putting them on the end of the canes. I misfired my arrow and it went into Alfie's eye and I think he was blinded.

No. 4: An old man and his son.

No. 5: A couple and their three sons, Dick, Jim and Sid, also his daughter but I can't remember her name. Their father was a fish hawker and had a barrow which he left outside his house.

No. 6: Ann, Ellen, myself, Victor and Eric.

No. 7: A woman and her elderly father.

No. 8: Another fish hawker who also had a barrow, when he died his widow re-married, but I can't think of what her second husband did for a living.

No. 9: A couple with two children; the son (went) in the RAF and (got) killed in the war. His father drove a lorry for a wholesale grocer in Jubilee Street.

No. 11: A fisherman who had a boat on Brighton beach. Before Good Friday this would be cleaned for the trippers and used as a pleasure boat.

No. 12: Jim also owned a boat. They had boats on the beach and they were called Perseverance and Flower of the Fleet but I can't remember whose was who. As kids we would live down on the beach in the summer and sometimes the local kids would have a free ride.