OLD NEWHAVEN
My memories of the 1960's
By David Beale
I grew up in Newhaven as a boy in the early sixties, some things stay with you all your life, and these are some I can still remember sixty years on.
My Top Ten Smells of the Town
10. Starting with a personnel one, mums bacon pudding, I’m sure the suet in the pudding gave it something extra. Served with Peas Pudding Yum! She’s still making it 60 years later
9. Sorrels Pig farm in Denton. Indeed several pig farms in Denton. I wonder if many youngsters today have ever had the privilege. Swill fed, smelt like a good stew, pig slurry not so good.
8. Coal. Does anyone have a coal fire anymore, its own special smell just after its lit, the coalman carrying sacks down the path shooting the contents into a bunker, always tall lean fellows, unrecognizable covered in coal dust.
7. Bacon and sausages cooking on a wood fire. While on holiday contemplating a barbecue, I remembered cooking Breakfast on a camping trip with the Cubs, it must have been the first time I had ever had food cooked outside, as barbeques were not popular then. Fred Cole MBE was the Scout master and lived next door, a loud but kindly and Christian man.
6. The pony that lived in Dr A Brooks field in Western Road. It was a small Dark Bay pony about 12/2 always a shiny coat that smelled of; well pony! I never did know its name.
5. The Fire Station in Meeching Road. The large sliding doors were always left slightly open so you could have a look inside, where two large red Dennis fire engines stood , always gleaming , the smell a mix of polish and diesel. Now and then you might be lucky enough to be outside when they were called out, bells ringing frantically.
4. Gorse, as a boy I would play on the Union, covered in gorse on the side of the Downs. If you ran through it, it would give off a perfumed smell and scratch your legs to bits.
3. Winkles. We lived in Northdown Road, a couple of chaps would come around weekly during the season selling pints of winkles I have never been a fish lover, but love winkles and with their own distinct aroma. Extracted with a pin and eat them with a little vinegar and salt.
2. Bowles farm, Court Farm Road. The smell of cows fed entirely on grass. It’s something I have got used to over the last 50 years. Sadly not so my wife!
1. Granddads garage, (Dick Lower boat builder) a heady mix of Oak logs Linseed Oil and Tobacco leaves (he made his own cigars, fond memories of sugar sandwiches and Gooseberries with granny.
David Beale
Editors note:-
My personal one is of fried fish & chips which reminds me of the smell emanating from Collington's, my maternal grand parents fried fish and chip shop in South Road as we left the Boys Club after an evening playing snooker or table tennis, but that was a little earlier in the 1950's.
Have you got any smell that triggers a memory of times gone by?
John Hills