Looking down the hill towards the Market Square at Arundel.
'I have tried to think of prices but not much comes to mind. It ought to as I did all the family shopping from my mother's list. A coburg or cottage loaf was fourpence that I used to buy red hot from the Co-op in Tarrant Street at 7.30 a.m. Silverside of beef tenpence to one shilling a pound.
'A Mr. Hall was the landlord then, who never pressed if things were tight. He knew we would never owe for long. The price of vegetables I guess would vary, as now. We were just about self sufficient in those so did not need to buy much.
'My brother and I had to tend two allotments, one along the end of the Ford road and one up the Chichester road opposite to where the new hospital was built.
'Coal then was about 2/6d per cwt. for kitchen nuts which we burnt on the Lambert & Butler cooking range in the kitchen. Mother did most of her cooking on top of it as well as inside, and heated the flat irons on the top for doing the ironing. Later we had a gas ring for that job.
'After a storm we would scour the woods for fallen branches to saw up for the winter fires. You were not allowed to touch the trunks of the trees but you could go to the Arundel Estate office and buy timber if it was of no use to the sawmills, costing usually between 10 and 15 shillings, but then you got a good lot of logs out of that amount of wood.
The Arundel Estate office manages vast tracts of land and property for the Duke of Norfolk.
'At Christmastime the Duke would give the children a party in the Barons Hall, with a big tree and lots of eats and drinks and games with a small present to take home. When Bernard, Duke of Norfolk became 21, or if you will, reached his majority, there was a huge bonfire with fireworks on Bury Hill. We all walked there and after the revelry walked home. It was quite late when we reached home and I can feel my legs aching now.
Picturesque setting for purveyor of provisions: Denton's Stores in the Market Square at Arundel. (Denton had another grocery shop at 44, South Street, Worthing.)
'In summer the army used to come to camp in Arundel Park. There were lines and lines of tents and vehicles too. They used to arrive by train on a Sunday morning, one train after another. There were always three if not four bands to play and lead soldiers on their march from the station to the park. They would be there for about two weeks and each evening many of the townspeople would walk to the park to listen to whichever band was playing that night.
Next week Ron describes more characters and traders from Arundel's past and how they were affected by the Great Depression.
This article was first published in the West Sussex Gazette on December 7th 1995.
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