This picture-postcard caught my eye: not so much for its depiction of the Palace Pier, more for the clear and very wonderful view of the goat stand. Early views of the area around the entrance to the Palace Pier have often shown horses and carriages. For a number of years, there stood a stone trough. … But what can be said of the goats? Can anyone remember this past feature of the seafront, or tell something about it?
Date of the photograph
The clock tower immediately dates this scene from 1930. I think the facade of the Palace of Fun looked this way until around 1955; these clues (and others) give at least some idea as to the time of the photograph. “September 1945” is written on the back of the postcard, but I can’t help wondering if the picture was taken significantly earlier. The publisher isn’t stated.
Look of a bygone age
By the time this picture was taken, hadn’t horse and carriage become old-fashioned and a far rarer form of urban transport? The bath chair (to the right) also has the look of a bygone age. What few, limited years must have remained for the allotted road space, in an era of rapidly increasing motor traffic?
I look forward to learning more – post a comment below if you can help.
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I would think that the car to the extreme left of the photo in front of the horse drawn carriage is something from the 1920s. Several seaside towns do still have horse drawn carriages for the visitors, Blackpool is the best known today and you do get a good view of the illuminations from one of these but they are very expensive! I remember in the late 1940s or early 50s there were a few, (maybe two or three) old ladies still being pulled along the sea front for their daily constitutional in bath chairs similar to the one shown here but I don’t remember the goat carts although the Palace Pier was one of our regular haunts after the War.
Thanks for sharing those recollections with us, Tim.
About 15 years ago I was teaching an adult ed class in Rottingdean with my oldest student ever, Mrs Alma Law, then 93. She gave me a picture of her in 1913 in a goat cart next to Chain Pier House on the Madeira Drive. She also gave me a tin-plate photo of her father taken in 1875 standing on a huge capstan on Brighton beach. It is hair -raising to think I taught someone whose father could have met and talked to a fisherman on that beach, possible someone born in the 18th century.
Well Geoffrey – when are you going to scan them and share with us all?
Jennifer
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