OLD RIVERSIDE

I lost a ten bob note walking around here one day. You may not think thats not much money to lose, it is when you only get £2.14.6p a week which equates to 1s and 3d 3 farthings an hour. My dad gave me a good telling off. That would have been about 1961.

This is it! I've just posted a comment on another article about the manager of the Co-Op at http://bit.ly/tQVeH5 This is the old cinder track that I remember and I'm pretty sure that is the entrance to the Co-Op dairy! I remember finding a ten-bob note there one day - JUST KIDDING!

Yes thats right Ashley the grocery stock room is the bit with the "greenhouse" on top and the dairy was on the left of this back entrance.

John -- Editor

Thanks for that information John. I presume that the new road runs through directly where that grocery store and the building to its left then stood? What was the building nearer the Denton Island bridge with the creamy yellow wall? From studying an old map of the town, would I be correct in my calculations that that bridge was the original river crossing before the new 'cut' was made in the river, north of the swing bridge?

From the early 1970s until the final closure of the new Denton Island site my step father, Colin Maslen, was at first a milkman and later manager of the Coop dairy. I remember going with him on his round during the school summer holidays and also watching with bated breath when the large milk delivery trucks would inch along the Cinder track, certain that one would end up in the river. Other roundsmen I remember were Wilf Ashdown, John Porritt and John Ingram was the yard manager. I think it was Wilf's father who used to walk his round with an electric cart in the Gibbon Road area. The Coop depot moved to a purpose built site on Denton Island when the new road was put in and remained there until the late 1990s when the delivery services were centralised from the Moulscombe Way depot in Brighton.