DROVE

This picture shows the Drove Garage or as I remember, many years before, was known as the " MCM" Garage. Anyone know what the " MCM " stood for. Also the antenna showing above the canopy is on top of what used to be Champion Radio and just beyond Champions was the Vacco factory.

I have just heard that there was an ice rink above the garage. Can anybody remember going there?

My buddy, Andy MacQueen, (your current lifeboat fulltime mechanic), used to have a flat above and to the right of the garage, so not sure about an ice rink. In the late 80's I was one of the Telecom guys in Newhaven and we had our account at 'The Drove'.

My father, Fred Bishop, was Spray Shop foreman for Champions in the early 50's. He later started his own Company called "Channel Cabinets" sub-contracting to Fergusons Radio on Denton Island, Roberts Radio and Dansette. (If you owned a Dansette record player in the 60's the chances are that my fathers Company made the cabinet!)

In about 1937 I went every week with my friend Joyce Sims (from The Jolly Sailor, Chapel St.), roller skating at the rink in Railway Road. It was 6d with your own skates and 1 shilling to hire them. I had my own skates. The boys used to show off speed skating and would follow each other around in a long line. The girls were more sedate and skated in partners.

I think, Mr Penfold, Jack Amy's uncle owned it. I also remember going there to see Ralph Reader's Gang Show and Jack Ives and his Accordian Band.

When I was 3 or 4 my mother worked at Valentines (now Parker Pen) and one New Year I was dressed as a fairy and had to chase Old Father Tyme across the hall at a New Year's Eve dance. I knew a lot of people there. I have happy memories of Railway Road.

From 1960 until 1974 I walked or cycled this route. First to The Harbour Infants school, next to Meeching Juniors and then to Newhaven County Secondary School which became Tideway in my second year. I saw so much change. The only industry along the Drove in 1960 apart from the garage was Wheatleys scrap yard. It gradually deteriorated into the mess it is now. Shame. There used to be Swans and Moor Hens on the little pond to the south and cattle on the meadow.

The Drove had a field that was the site for visiting fun-fairs and circuses I remember seeing one of my first real circuses (as opposed to TV shows) there Broncho Bills Wild West Circus with REAL Lions!!! In a book about Rosaires Circus they recall setting up at The Drove in Newhaven in 1939 only to be visited by a policeman on a bike who told them they could not open as war had been declared.