PETER BAILEY MBE - IN CONVERSATION
Early Memories of Newhaven c1920s
As told to Jackie Blackwell
Peter Bailey outside Newhaven Library, Sept 2007
Sylvia Woolford
Where it began... I was born on 1st November 1916 in Littlehampton. My parents had been married at St Peter's Church in Brighton and as their last child they called me Peter after the Church... I was the baby of four children, two boys - Leonard & Ray, one girl - Myrtle and me. Father was an Excise Officer in the Customs and when I was about four he sought a posting to Exeter in Devon. I didn't see my mother very often as she had consumption and she was often in isolation so I was only able to see her occasionally...
Coming to Newhaven... The family returned to lodge in Brighton around 1923 when I was about seven as Father had got a posting in Newhaven and he was looking for accommodation to buy for us there. My mother was sent to Newhaven Convent in Church Hill and was nursed by the Nuns. I can remember walking past an open window at the Convent one time and stopped to hear the beautiful sound of a Nun singing solo in the Chapel close by - I thought that the place must have been the gateway to heaven... It was the last time I saw my mother. She died when I was eight years old.
Part of Newhaven Convent, c1925
Old Postcard
Meeching Road... Dad found and bought a big house at 39 Meeching Road where we lived until we moved to 66 Hillcrest Road. Dad had to work nights at the Port with his job so me and my sister, Myrtle, who was only 3 years older than me, were left in the house alone. Both my brothers had already left home by then. Myrtle always made me check under every bed, behind every door and in every cupboard before she'd go to bed!
Photo taken at the rear of 39 Meeching Road c1927. L-R: Sister Myrtle (wearing her Convent Day School hat), Olive Archer (daughter of Freddy), brother Ray, me (Peter Bailey) and Dad. Note the meat safe on the left dividing wall and the glass top of the cold frame. This was carried by me (Peter) and neighbour Reg Hibling (who died recently in 2008) to 66 Hillcrest Road when we moved there. Reg's ball had come over wall earlier and broken a pane of glass hence him helping to carry it after repair!
From private collection of Peter Bailey
Boyhood Memories... I loved Newhaven as here I could walk around the west side, which then was really commercially busy - it was great to watch the activity and walk about it. It was from being a child down there that I grew to love ships and the harbour. Freddy Archer who was a foreman on the main Quays would often sit me on his knee at his home then at 59 Meeching Road, and puff pipe smoke over me and tell me all about the boats, what they did, where they were going, the disasters and such.
I went to the local Newhaven Boys School (now the Hillcrest Centre). Often after school we'd go down to Sleeper's Hole (where the Marina is now) where there were two rafts loosely chained together at the high water bank. If you rocked one of the rafts water would cover the other one. Two or three of us would get on each of the rafts and try and cover the other ones feet - good innocent fun... But a price to pay back home for the salt marks which appeared on our shoes when they dried!