These high quality photographs were taken around 1971, the first picture shows the top end of the High Street, with South Way now open for west bound traffic. Only east bound traffic entered the High Street, the end house at the bottom of Brighton Road is still there waiting for the construction of North Way. The property looks out towards Amy’s Garage where you can just see a slither of the fuel pumps. Outside the Conservative Club is the old wooden village sign post pointing to Lewes, London and probably Brighton and Seaford.
The next two photographs are taken in reverse with the first picture looking down from the top towards the old tree outside Lloyds bank, and the other looking up to where the previous photo had been taken.
Comments about this page
The photo second down in the High Street 1971 is me aged 18 looking in Dees,
John Kingshott
Yes John, I think we must have done the roof around the mid sixties. The reason I remember doing the roof was that George missed the nail when fixing one of the rafters I was holding and hit my thumb so hard it damaged the nail bed and I have a distorted thumbnail to this day.
I think the white building on the left was called the Wool shop (John will correct me if not, happy for him to do so) when I was an apprentice carpenter I helped put a pitched roof on this building with George Mitchell one of the other carpenters.
At this time in 1971 Terry the white shop on the left (in picture two) was P R Gray Opticians. The Wool Shop was there at one time.
John – Editor
Blocking off cars to the town centre seems to have been its downfall, In all these photos you can see shops and people…nowadays all you see is “For Sale” signs and tumbleweed rolling across the pavements. The town should be opened up to traffic again. Seaford has a busy highstreet with lots of cafes and shops and it’s a nice place to walk through, but Newhaven doesn’t have this anymore; there is nothing to really see apart from estate agents and banks. Open the roads up again, let cars through (maybe introduce speed bumps to make them go slow) allow temp parking on the side of these roads and give drivers a place to stop and buy things that they need without having to go to a large supermarket and queue for ages just to buy a bottle of milk. More cafes would open, more small shops, maybe it would make the town a better place to visit.
It’s great to see these pictures of the old High Street. I remember it being like this, for most of my childhood. I lived in Meeching Rise and was affected by South Way being built.
In the second photo on the left, is that scaffolding for the ‘new’ post office being built.? Centre of photo is my uncle Brians’ Sport Shop which he had for a number of years. As previously mentioned in photo of Bullens Bush, us kids would ‘recover’ lost golf balls from the golf course and sell them on to him, in turn he would have them in a basket at the front of the store probably to sell back to the original owners.
Add a comment about this page