You could hear the school bell

“My favourite place was always Queens Park. When I was a child I used to have to cut through it to go to school. You’d always go there early and meet all your friends before school and play in the play park and then you’d hear the school bell. Everyone would run down. I probably spent from primary school age up until my late teens mucking around in the park.

I was born in Brighton and grew up in Hanover, which is connected to the park really because it’s where I was taken as a child. Up until I left home I always lived in that area and I went to Queens Park school. It was the focus of my growing up. I’ve never really got out of Brighton so it has stayed like that.

I have mixed feelings about the park though now. I have experienced it late at night, where it becomes a more frightening place, and also getting attacked by seagulls, walking through there. So sometimes I’m scared when I’m in the park, because of the seagulls. So my experience is quite different now.”

Comments about this page

  • I went to Queens Park 2 years ago. You’re right, its a lovely school but its crumbling away now – some bricks have become loose.

    By Tanya (27/03/2005)
  • I love this park. It has been there for me at some of the hardest times in my life. I have also spent some of my happiest moments in this park. The last time I saw my wife and child was in the playground. I found my dog in the rockery. When I was homeless I slept there for a week… luckily it was in the summer so I woke up everyday to the sunshine and birds singing. I now live in the Queens Park area and have to walk through the park daily to get to Somerfield where I work. Queens Park is a very special place!

    By Steve (14/05/2005)
  • I live near and I go there ever other night to sit and read because it’s so nice.

    By Kirsty Butterworth (17/05/2005)
  • Queens Park is a very nice place and none of the seagulls attack you – and it’s very quiet and peaceful. The school which I’m at now is very old but good.

    By Sam B (06/06/2005)
  • In the fifties we played in Queen’s Park as kids. We would spend hours by the pond catching sticklebacks and tadpoles with our little nets. We kept them in a jar until it was time to go home when we released them back into the pond. Just by the park there was a soft drinks place called Hooper Stroove I think by the south entrance.

    By Mick Peirson (19/11/2006)
  • My maiden name was Peachey and my sister Audrey and I lived in the Queen’s Park area in the 1930s and 1940s. We both attended St Luke’s Infants and then Juniors before going on to Varndean, a private Grammar School at the time, to which you had entry by scholarship. I well remember the sheer horror of hearing the St Luke’s school bell and running as fast as possible to get to the school before Miss Dutton Bryant, with academic cloak, met us at the door to tell us that we were late and would be punished. We spent hours in Queen’s Park. We always felt secure because there was a park keeper in his hut in the swings area and he always told us that he ‘knew our Dad’ and that stopped us from any wrongdoing. We did the most amazingly dangerous things on the plank swings and how we all survived I do not know. We had the vast amount of grass, the pond, the trees and of course the swings and spent a good deal of our lives there. With the sea and the beach and the ‘Race Hill’ on the Downs, we had plenty to do that cost no money and did not turn us into the anti-social youngsters of today (not all of course but too many) who are sadly adults before they have had the fun of being young. Life is dynamic and we cannot, perhaps should not go back or even stay still but I must say that Audrey and I look back at some aspects of our young lives with nostalgia and Queen’s Park is one of them.

    By Dr. Joyce Hargrave-Wright (19/04/2009)
  • I lived in Islingword Road for many years as a child and Queens Park is one of my very fond memories of which I still try to visit on a regular basis. it hasn’t changed much through the years but I am very sad to see the bowling green in the way that it is today. My grandparents who enjoyed watching the bowls there would also be ashamed im sure.

    By Paul (19/01/2011)
  • So many memories. In the park things that make life worth living but my life changed when I hit high school. But alas my young family has reunited us again. For me there is nowhere so relaxed yet retaining its Victorian presence. I really hope we find a home near. My husband wants to move outside of Brighton but I so want to share the great bits with my daughter and son.

    By Sophia (13/08/2013)

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