Popular air photo from the 1930s
BACK in 1997 I was able to purchase new, with its own certificate, one of the several air photos taken of our location in the early 1930s, that in use here is certified as May 25, 1931.
It makes a change from having to hopefully calculate the possible year.
Many readers will have copies of these pictures, which were much treasured when they first appeared. Some have been used in the picture postcard books I compiled in the 1970s.
It might help new-comers to understand what was, and we old timers to refresh some of the reasons for disagreements over the latter years.
Nearest left, on the West Bank, is just the corner tip of the Bonded Warehouse, with a steam crane sticking up from a larger landing stage.
This I believe was a private supplier of the black diamonds to requirers such as Campbells white funnel pleasure steamers and the like.
The large coal wharf was more to the left of this site and accepted the coal from the companies steamers and used two steam cranes.
This reached almost to the Ark Inn. Moving south are five stages for mostly small craft. The next stage, which appears to have something white – vertical, is still here being used for chalk (and its by-products), being exported.
All the way down is a white wall. Near from this was the rail track, which finished at the sea end of the breakwater.
Here, it would have crossed the white road, which leads to the stage with the white upright.
This was a metal chute that could be lowered to over a vessel, which would receive the chalk dragged there in small wooden rail trucks, from the Meeching Quarry (alongside Gibbon Road) by one of three cart horses resident for that purpose (and stabled in Court Farm Road).
There were at least two sets of rail tracks alongside that leading from Fort Road (where sign Beware of Trains was visible).
Each horse would have attained a trot as it neared the landing stage. Its handler applied a quick release, led the horse away from the truck carried on to the stage, where a sunken buffer held it.
The upper body tipped up sending the cargo of chalk down a metal chute into the hold of the vessel, which steam or sail seemed to roll in appreciation.
Despite our patient watching, we never saw a truck follow its cargo into the vessel's hold. Happy days.
Beyond the chute is the famous salvage tug, Foremost 22, which took command about 1924, but between her and the chute would be the dumb oil tanker Nitrogen, which would receive oil fuel from railway tankers, which off-loaded into a large storage tank just visible.
The small tug Richmere would take the tanker to a channel steamer requiring fuel. In this case the Worthing (nearest the sea) and the others as they became converted to the new fuel.
In the night berth (now ferry terminal) probably the French Newhaven, nearer the Dieppe and closest the Arundel.
The latter two had been evicted from the lay-by berth in Sleepers Hole, where they were awaiting sale, but evicted while the Hole was being dredged (beyond the Foremost the Lifeboat House and the Harbour Watch House).
East side: the hydraulic tower, The Shades, the London and Paris Hotel, the Victoria footbridge across Tidemills Creek.
At left, white with dark roof the Oyster Pond Cottages, no footbridge over track, not yet electrified.
Top left of centre: the large sea plane hanger, dismantled in the early 1930s by Southern Railway and trained to Wimbledon, where it was re-erected for storage of gear required for the electrification of Southern Region.
It's still there today, with a listing for its class.
Picture No 2: The glory 30s. From left to right: Mrs Mary Dewdney (nee Towner) with daughter Pamela (who grew up and christened tug Meeching), Mrs Featherstone ( who had a popular cafe in Bridge Street) and Norma Jenner (nee Towner).
The two were of four Towner girls. Their father Henry Arthur, one of the brothers who lastly operated the famed Tipper brewery, behind the Bridge Hotel.
The mother, Winifred Towner (nee Stone, the Millers) famed for posing on the first owned car in Newhaven, her husband's Mercedes Benz, with her hand not on the wheel, but the Tiller.
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Weather for Lewes
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -6 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: -5 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North east
