This store was called Teetgens when I was a boy, and a real old fashioned and classy grocers I always thought. The Belgravia Dairies shop was adjacent at the front and their yard entrance, a little further up Lauriston Road.

I too know this as Teetgens. My mum was a cleaner for the Hon Mrs Carlkton of Flat 2, 181 Preston Road, one of the lovely houses opposite the park. This would have been in the early 1960s. The Hon Mrs Carlton had been married to a Colonel of the 60th Rifles and had had the royal princesses to tea at Windsor before the war. She liked a drink or two! My mum had to go along to the 'Licensed Grocers' as she always refered to Teetgens for a bottle of Haig whisky, always 'on account'. It was part of a bygone age when that area of Brighton was very genteel and Preston village did seem just that...a village!

Really interesting to read these comments about the shop before it belonged to my parents. We had quite a few customers who liked to entertain and that first winter we had quite a lot of snow but customers had placed their orders so mum and I had to go out in our Ford Cortina Estate and try to deliver the boxes of food and drink. In Peacock Lane mum fell over and all she was worried about was if the bottles of spirits were broken. Then we were trying to deliver to a block of flats just off Preston Road and got stuck in the snow with the car slithering between a pond and a six foot drop into a basement area. I was desperately shoving bits of cardboard under the wheels to no avail and there was not a soul in sight to help us. I was only 12 at the time. I spotted some branches in a corner behind a tree and put those behind the wheels and that did the trick and we did the last delivery who instead of being grateful moaned that we were late, and we headed home exhausted.