Do you remember 'Charlie's'?
I arrived in Brighton in 1980 to set up a Roller Skate Shop. My business partner helped her mother set up a restaurant called Charlie’s in Manchester Street. This was previously a cafe for the Bus Station which used to be opposite.
This must have been a bustling area when the bus station was used regularly by visitors to the town. Charlie’s had lovely old wooden boxes to hold heavy cutlery. There was also an original counter with a shiny, old fashioned water boiler.
Does anyone remember the bus station and Charlie’s in their hey day?
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Until around the mid-1970s there was a coach garage on the left hand side of Manchester Street, where up to four (usually Southdown) coaches were stabled, and the entrance to the Steine Street Coach Station (also owned by Southdown) was on the right. On summer weekends, especially, the ‘throughput’ of coaches was considerable, with anything up to twelve an hour arriving or departing. There was a small wooden waiting room inside the building (it had a largely glass roof) and I recall a large clock on the wall of the coach station with Roman figures. This was beside the original Head Office of Southdown (5 Steine Street), an address carried on the side of around 900 green and cream buses that operated all over Sussex and into Hampshire and Kent.
My mum used to work in Southdown coach station in the left luggage from 1968 till it closed. Her name was Iris Moore.
Does anyone have pictures of the old coach station in Manchester Street?
Hi David Hainsworth, please e-mail me [g.mead@sussex.ac.uk] and I can let you have at least one image of the coach station.
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