The first photograph here from the James Gray Collection is of a grocers shop on the corner of Kensington Place and Trafalgar Street was taken in 1906.
The second photograph is the same premises photographed recently. Do you remember this shop? What year was that and what did the shop sell?
If you can help, please leave a comment below.
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Didn’t realise news came in bottles these days!
A sad comment [but apposite] on our city these days, the amount of shops given licences to sell alcohol is amazing. In a previous life I was a wines & spirits manager for J.Sainsbury, one of the licence conditions was not to sell to -“an habitual drunkard’. That condition has obviously been abandoned now. I have been doing 6 history tours every weekend during Brighton Festival Fringe and the whole city centre is plagued with street drinkers, making my job really difficult. I had to call out the police last weekend to clear St Nicholas churchyard of a foul mouthed group urinating on the church wall and who threatened to “lay me out” when I protested! I just rang 101 and the constabulary arrived. What a comment on Brighton 2013. Especially galling as my taxes buy their Special Brew cans!
Bad news, Geoffrey! My aunt used to live next door to St Nicks, and would not have been amused by the scene you describe. My local Waitrose in London was ‘upgraded’ some time ago, and I was staggered by the emphasis on alcohol in the new layout! That’s where the money is, I suppose.
Not going so far back, but the shop I remember in Trafalgar Street was on the corner of Pelham street and sold war surplus stuff just after WW2. I spent quite a lot of my pocket money there.
Sorry to hijack this page for a winge, Jennifer, but I have to agree with Geoffrey. Brighton has lost all appeal to me now, despite being able to trace both paternal and maternal lines back at least three centuries. I’d move well away if it wasn’t for work and family.
Trafalgar Street? Ah yes in the late 30’s the family business was at the top on the North side (Waller’s Corn and Seeds – later moved to Southwick). I lived in the back of the shop after moving from London Road (under the railway arch) after diptheria at Preston Road School (1936?). The trunk murderer did his work not far from the top of Trafalgar Street – Mancini? I was a member of the rather harmless boys’ gangs that roamed the area, many of us later were found in Boys Brigade Companies. I remember the local beauty’s surname: ‘Love’. Her brother was a gang leader but I heard that she electrocuted herself one day when ironing. My dad electrocuted himself in the bath tub aged 79: Robert Waller ex Brighton Fire Brigade and Brighton Harriers. Interesting memories, if not all happy.
That corner shop has had so many changes. I’m sure it was a pub in the early 40s, it was a men’s clothing store in the late 50s. I lived at number 44 from 1945 – 1958.
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