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University of Sussex

Construction of the Gardner Arts Centre
Photo:Construction of Gardner Arts Centre, University of Sussex

Construction of Gardner Arts Centre, University of Sussex

Photo from private collection of John Desborough

Photo:Aerial view of the University of Sussex

Aerial view of the University of Sussex

Photo from private collection of John Desborough

Audio transcripts

This page was added on 22/03/2006.

Comments:

My dad, Charles John Budd Desborough, was a bricklayer and you can see him in the foreground here with his cap on.  He was a great builder, fast and accurate, and had a good eye for a straight wall.  He was very proud of the fact that he was involved in the building of many prominent buildings in the Brighton area.  He once came home when I was very young, in the 1950s, covered in cuts and bruises - he had fallen from the top of the Dudley Hotel in Hove.  He had stepped on to an unsecured scaffold board and fallen through the hole.  He later told me that he had the presence of mind to just grab at the horizontal scaffold poles as he fell, this saved his life.  He was off work but they didn't have such a thing as compensation in those days - you just got better and went back to work.

By John Desborough (05/11/2006)

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