Queueing up long ago for a sale day bargain

Round about that time, for a population of more than 7,000, there were three or four outfitters exclusively for men and boys, more than twice that number for ladies and younger children and a few baby-linen shops, plus at least three drapers, who dealt in fabrics and haberdashery as well as clothing. There were also at least three boot and shoe suppliers and several tailors and dressmakers, sometimes operating from their homes. Later there was one 'dress agency'.

Ladieswear shop Ashby and Co moved from their 1913 premises in Terminus Buildings (corner of Clinton Place/Blatchington Road) to 20-21 Clinton Place, to be replaced by The Bon Marche in the mid-1920s, then Collihole's till comparatively recently. The illustration by veteran photographer Mr WR Wynter of Ashby's sale windows in their early days is one of my favourite old Seaford pictures, with as many hats and intimate garments as possible crammed in, a press of would-be customers waiting for the doors to open, and a solitary bare-headed bargain-hunter, all ready to try on her target headgear! This postcard view was actually written and posted on the day of the sale by one of Ashby's saleswomen.

Another long-standing outfitters (though the name varied from time to time when the proprietors did) was Portsmouth's at 34 Church Street. In the mid-1930s it was 'The Misses H & E Portsmouth (late Portsmouth & Freeman)' and was still there, with one rather sad gabardine raincoat in pride of place in the window in 1959, the earliest date of my own memories. Within a very few years the premises became the town's first self-service grocery '“ the M & C Stores.

How amazingly attitudes to dress have changed since the days of Ashby's and Portsmouth's, from the pre-World War Two era by way of clothes rationing and the 'CC41' Utility mark, resulting in 'Make Do and Mend' (still operative in some homes! - it's a difficult habit to break).

What woman of those times can forget hearing the first news of nylon stockings, followed by wearing her first pair? (Mine were sent by my American pen-friend).

Coincidentally, it was our transatlantic namesake, Seaford in the state of Delaware, that saw the birth of the wonder hosiery in 1939. Only a short while later, however, total production of nylon '“ 'a material of supreme strategic importance' '“ was switched to a multitude of military items, and glamorous film star Betty Grable raised 40,000 dollars in War Bonds by publicly removing hers and auctioning them.

Forty years before, stockings would not have been considered an acceptable subject for mixed conversation: ugly black woollen things for most women '“ who needed reminding of

them? Held up with garters, later elastic and metal suspenders ... better-off people began to wear silk, but they still had to be fastened somehow, and they took ages to dry after laundering.

Ah, yes, the weekly horrors of washday! More about that next time.