Elephants at the bottom of the Street

Thursday 13 July 1899 was a very special day in Brighton. 

Over excited children hadn't been able to sleep the night before and expectant adults lined the streets three deep. 

The circus was in town! 

There goes The Greatest Show On Earth

The lucky folk living in Temple Street could just stroll out of their houses and there it was, slowly going past the bottom of the road, making its lumbering, noisy, fantastic way along Western Road into town. 

This wasn't any old travelling amusement either – it was Barnum and Bailey's, the most famous circus in the world on its grand tour of Europe.

The American show was travelling around the country by railway that year and, as was the custom by then, on leaving its special train, it paraded through town to advertise that night's show. 

The crowds lapped it up. That year Barnum and Bailey's procession was three miles long and included a menagerie, exotic horsemen, dozens of elephants, clowns, acrobats, jugglers, an enthroned king and queen, a military band, 70 horses, untold sundry beasts and a collection of 'living human curiosities'. 

Here are two interesting old photos showing the southern end of Temple Street, looking west, as the procession rumbled by, and one shot taken from Bedford Square looking east.

   In the two photos featuring Temple Street there is no sign of Temple Bar on the corner, showing a shop called Pullars instead.

The third photo shows the less exotic back end of the parade. An omnibus is following on and many of the crowd are starting to walk behind it. You can see that all the houses on the north side of in Western Road, looking east, still have their gardens at this time, before they lost them in its gradual widening. The Council started to buy up houses on the north side in 1906 but it wasn't until 1935 that the final property came into line, all gardens were gone, and the widening could be completed.

Looks like it might have been a sunny July day judging by the parasol on the top of the omnibus

  Photographs thanks to the Regency Society and James Gray Collection

Fighting against the closure of our Post Office

We're being told to use the Melville Road PO up the hill in Seven Dials

Our local Post Office branch at 22 Western Road is under threat. Is it already a done deal? The Post Office claim not, saying that a public consultation, which ends on 16 September 2015, will be taken seriously.

The Post office is a priceless asset in our area, and its closure would be a great loss. What can we do?

Sign the petition in local shops and online. Go to www.38degrees.org.uk and search for 'Brunswick'.

The petition says: “Brunswick Town in Hove is a densely populated area and the post office proposed for closure is at the centre of the community, is very well used and has won many awards.

“Post Office Limited states that alternative provision will be accessible to residents but this provision is a mile away up a hill.

“We worry about elderly and infirm residents being able to access the new ‘merged’ post office in Melville Road.

“Our Post Office in Brunswick Town provides an essential public service where people need it and we wholly oppose plans to close it.”

Fill in the consultation form. At a recent public meeting, the Post Office Representatives said this was key. They will take notice if we tell them how useful this branch is and how closing it will create problems for many of us. Go to www.postofficeviews.co.uk and enter branch code 010907

Write to Paula Vennells, CEO of Post Office Ltd.
Your letters and postcards can be taken into CITY BOOKS, next to the Post Office, or send to FREEPOST Your comments

Contact you local media and get busy on Twitter.

Spread the word and maybe our Post Office can be saved.

The value of a Temple Street house - in 1936

An old Auctioneer's note of Particulars from 1936

So houses in the street were fetching around £750 in those days. That, by one method of reckoning here, is the equivalent of £47,596 in 2015 allowing for inflation – which is less than a tenth of the going price now (in some cases, much less).

It was leased from The Portsmouth and Brighton United Breweries who owned a number of Brighton pubs at this time.

Of goats and kids

One of the most popular images on our website – judging from the number of times we’ve seen it copied –  is that of young Reg Grey driving a goat cart down the street in 1919. Reg later owned a hairdresser’s at Number 23 and his wife Enid Grey still lives in the street over the road at Number 37.

Reg’s mum or dad, or perhaps an indulgent uncle, would most likely have hired the cart nearby on the seafront next to Hove Lawns. Goat carts had been a popular attraction in Brighton since the 1830s, according to the Francis Frith website, but they were expensive, costing one shilling per hour by the mid 19th century.

Reg and his little sister Rita driving their goat cart down Temple Street

A flower girl and goat carts for hire near Hove Lawns, c.1890

A goat should only pull about 1 ½ times its own weight, according to experts in the field, so the little carts were perfect for carrying young'uns up and down the front, but they were also used for more workaday duties by tradesmen of the time, delivering items such as milk, vegetables and barrels of water.

Many of the carts, few of which have survived, were beautifully made by craftsmen and two motor companies of later renown, Peugeot in France and Studebaker in America, manufactured them before moving on to more glamorous vehicles.

Sadly the goats were often abused and ill treated. Local councils at seaside resorts later licensed all operators giving goat carriage rides and conditions improved somewhat.

In Brighton, the last known Harness Goat Licence was issued in 1953.

A couple of Victorian children take 'Our Morning Ride' on Madeira Drive

It's Number 3 in '83

This is Number 3 Temple Street in 1983 when the Jinks family bought it. It looks much the same today. Reg and his family had originally started renting it in 1961.

Now, in 2015, Number 3 awaits its first new occupants for 54 years.

And they've arrived! See below.

Number 4 looks like it could do with a little attention

The Very Old Postbox in the Wall

Pre 1890: the interesting postbox set in a wall

There's an unusual  postbox around the corner, set in the wall of Montpelier Terrace, in which many Temple Street residents still post their letters. All we knew about it was that it was Victorian, and looked interesting. Roger Amerena of the Brighton and Hove Heritage Commission, was consulted. He is not only a fount of knowledge about our area, but lives just feet away from the box in Montpellier Hall.

Mr Amerena has provided just what we needed. He writes

'The two identical Montpelier Terrace and Temple Gardens wall letter boxes are from the 1887 series known as "the Jubilee Boxes".

W.T.Allen and Co of London were awarded the contract to make them in 1886 and that company continued to produce these same styles for another 75 years.

Allen's produced three sizes which were in production for this period. Type A, the largest; Type B WB/85 (formerly No 1) which are in situ in Montpelier Terrace and Temple Gardens; and Type C (No 2).

Type B is fairly common nationally but still important in postal history. In Brighton it was rare. The style was installed in Brighton prior to Hove Corporation being established in the 1890's. Thus there are not known any to be placed in Hove.

    

I understand the Montpelier box was installed for Alderman Sir Joseph Ewart JP MD, who was Mayor of Brighton three times from 1891 to 1894.

Alderman Sir Joseph was ex Irish Militia and Deputy Surgeon General of the Bengal Army, and been in service during the Indian Mutiny. He later became Surgeon General of the Indian Army, and after contracting typhoid, retired to Brighton in 1879 to live in Montpellier Hall. 

For mayoral duties this box would have been important to him – in those days you could post a letter in the morning and get a reply in the afternoon. The Brighton telephone service had not quite arrived.'

Temple Street at dusk, December 2014

Back to the 1920s on the corner

The shop signage from the Caffyns' showroom of the 1920s

The extensive refurbishment of the corner shop at 123-4 Western Road has revealed the original signage from the days when it was a car showroom for Caffyns. It opened in 1920.

After Classical Lighting – eventually! – closed, the shop briefly served as a vintage second-hand outlet for the Martlets charity, and is now being completely fitted out as an ice cream parlour.

Here's hoping that the original signage, with its classy embossed gold lettering set behind glass, can somehow be incorporated into the new scheme.

1950s-60s: the ladies of Temple Street

June Holloway has lived in Temple Street since the early 1950s. Here she looks back at some of the memorable characters who were her neighbours in those days

June Holloway in the 1980s

The thing that I most remember is the women. Back in the 1950s the street always used to full of older women, and when I looked into it later as I did a bit of local research, I discovered that quite a lot of the houses were owned by women and I realised, thinking about it afterwards, that these women fell into a number of groups.

There were the ones who had never had a husband because of the First World War, and those who'd had a husband who'd died in the War, and those who's husbands had just gone, for one reason or another. There seemed to be an enormous quantities of very strong women coping on their own, and even amongst those who had husbands, it was these women who seemed to be the ones who were assertive.

They were real characters, wonderful people – these are just a few…

Cissie Crook, for example, who died only about 10 years ago at 98 – she lived from 1932 at number 8 and was the wife of Soloman Crook, who was one of the tailors who had lived in the street. She was a very tiny lady, but nobody argued with her! Cissie had that way of talking to people which was bantering, but sounded very fierce until you got to know that she always had a sweet in her pocket for a small child.

In her later years she took a taxi down to the casino in the afternoons. She was almost completely deaf by that stage, and she used to say 'I can't do anything else these days - but I can go down there, I take £20 and then I lose it, but they're very nice to me, give me a little glass of something...'

Cissie Crook (centre) with Enid Gray and her daughters, Jane

Miss Coop lived at number 42. Did you ever see Giles cartoons? Well, she was just like Auntie Vera – Auntie Vera had a great long black coat down to the ground, a black felt hat and a perpetual drip on the end of her nose, and Miss Coop was a bit like that. She must have been in her 80s and she lived alone. She'd always come out in the morning with her shopping basket and go off to do her bits of shopping; she was like a little bird. When she died in her house they went in and they found piles and piles of wet newspapers, from all the damp coming up through the floorboards.

Auntie Vera

 At number 41 was Mrs Hughes, a Welsh lady, she was straight out of Dylan Thomas in her apron or overall with sleeves rolled up to reveal burly forearms. She would always be outside with her broom, because that's where the gossip was to be had, with anyone who walked past.

Besides, every proper housewife washed their doorstep before 10 each morning in those days. She once killed a rat with that broom.

Mrs Hughes had a faded ex-Indian army widow friend who lived nearby. They would always go out together. A lot of people around that time, in the 1950s, used to have a lodger, letting out one room here or there to help pay the bills.

Hyacinth Morton, at number 31, was the stepdaughter of Sir Ronald Storrs, who had been Governor of Jerusalem in the days of Laurence of Arabia, so she was brought up as the daughter of a very wealthy house, and she had the most amazing upper class accent.

Hyacinth had met everybody - she was a winner at a dinner party, coming out with things like "Yes, well I met King Farouk, he was dreadful man. When I was introduced to him he said, "Take this women away - I can't abide ugly women!" – and 'I remember George Bernard Shaw really well. I sat on his knee when I was 12." And she was at one of the Nuremberg Rallies and was on the platform 20 feet away from Hitler. 'He was so charismatic,' she said, 'I had to hold onto my hands so I didn't shout "Sieg Heil" as well!'

She was wonderful. I once met her on the street - this was by the time Peter and I were married, and she said 'Ah! Send the dear boy over this evening, will you - I've got a light bulb that needs changing. You'll come over and have a little gin with me whilst he's doing it.' I said 'Right, okay - about six?' and she said 'I'll get out my diary...'

Sir Ronald Storrs, Governor of Jerusalem

One rather strange lady had a penchant for scratching doors and cars with her keys. She was a simple soul, who'd had a horrible accident, been injured and received a sum in compensation. A taxi driver had become her "best friend", and used to take her to places – and systematically robbed her of the entire £20,000 she'd received, which was a lot of money at the time.

Mrs Shepherd, the ever-cheerful Irish lady at 27a, was married to a merchant seaman who came back home every two or three years. They had two children together and in 1958 their son was getting married, and wanted some money for the wedding, so he offered to paint the outside of our house – and that was the first time it was done. The price was £18, my mother was very happy with that – and so was he, it paid for the honeymoon.

Mrs Agomber was a very sad widow, she was a lodger in number 28, on the top floor. She'd lost her husband in the First World War, and must have been in her 80s when we arrived in the Street in 1953. We used to go and buy pink paraffin for her at Mence Smith, the ironmongers on the corner of Montpelier Road, where the Mad Hatter is now. She used it in her old oil heater that was her only source of heat. It must have been horrifically dangerous.

She became ill, and she was beside herself with fear; 'They'll take me to the workhouse, they'll take me to the workhouse – I'll die on the hill,' she said. This is the building that is now Brighton General Hospital at the top of Elm Grove, which in living memory did indeed used to be the Workhouse.

And sure enough, when she became ill, they took her there and she was terrified, and she died there.

Of course these are just a few – there were many others, great characters and good neighbours over the years, who have all been a part of what has made this street such a splendid and interesting place to live.

June and Peter

A very short cut to the pub

Number 12 used to have a very useful facility – direct access to the Borough Tavern that was at number 39 Borough Street. The back of the pub was just on the other side of the wall, and there was a doorway between the two properties.

The passage from the pub emerges in Temple Street, giving thirsty punters a very handy short cut.

Ian Burridge, who now owns number 12, told me he had come across a blocked off doorway when he was renovating a room at the back of his property, in the position that can be seen on the Ordnance Survey below.

This seems to explain the glass ball hanging outside the house in the recently discovered photograph, detail below, on which the word 'Spirits' can be seen. Spirits and more were to be enjoyed only a few steps away.

Temple Street on an Ordnance Survey map of the 1890s

 The passageway to the pub (marked P.H.) through Number 11 Temple Street

The glass ball advertising 'Wines, To Order, Spirits' above the passageway to the pub in Borough Street