This article was first published in the West Sussex Gazette on March 4th 1999

Surprised to see his name mentioned in this column Remember When (WSG 26/10/95), former Tarring and Broadwater cycle shop proprietor Ernie Meredith and his wife Margaret contacted me from their home town of Dawlish in the West Country, and were persuaded to tell their own story.

Going back to about 1941 the tale begins during World War II when Ernie was working for Saunders-Roe in Weybridge, (A Maintenance Unit M.U. repairing flying surfaces, wings, rudders etc from Walruses and Swordfish aircraft.) During this period he was also Dispatch Rider in the local Homeguard. At the end of the war he has transferred to Vickers Aviation.

During this time, Margaret Woods, who was to eventually become his wife, was a bus conductress with London Passenger Transport Boards, Country Buses, cycling to work for a 5.30 am start each morning. At the end of the war the bus job finished and she found employment in the accounts department of Littlehampton Council, until 1947 when she went to work for C W Collier & Sons, builders, of Teville Road, Worthing.

In her own words Margaret takes up the story: 'It was coming up to the time when we were to meet. Ernie's parents had a confectionery shop in Weybridge and a seaside house at Worthing, in Chesswood Road. Chesswood Road being not far from Teville Road, Mr Meredith Senior came in for something like timber or paint and recognised me from Weybridge, so I was invited to Chesswood and eventually I moved there to look after the house when they were away.

Ernie and I eventually met and we married in March 1950 and as a wedding present, Ernie's parents gave us the opportunity to start our own business, namely 'The Cycle Shop', Tarring. The owner of the property, a Mr E G Goodall, was well pleased when I offered to obtain and type out a Tenancy Agreement, saving professional fees; and our time as tenants was amicable all round.'

Ernie Meredith's cycle shop in Tarring in the early 1950s.

'Ernie worked up the business by introducing Lightweight Club Cycles, and it became a meeting place for the club lads and lasses of the district.'

Margaret, who continued to work for Colliers while Ernie 'found his feet' dressed his shop windows on Friday evenings, and did his accounts and paperwork.

The shop next door to the Tarring Village cycle shop was a greengrocer's run by Hughie Mansell and his wife. 'We had a few years of light comradeship. We then aspired to buying a new bungalow being built on a small site in Terringes Avenue by Sandells, opposite Bests' Nurseries.'

'I left Colliers about 1954 and went to work for Sandells the builders who soon after built two shops at 82/84 Broadwater Street West. They were offered to us. It was a challenge, but with everything crossed we said YES.'

The year was 1955. They signed up a lease for the new premises that boasted quite a large floor area: two floors, two shops in fact, but they had it knocked into one. 'Now faced with the difficult prospect of stocking this vast (to us) emporium, what were we to use for money? We saw our bank manager, who, without divulging his name, became a 'Dutch Uncle' for pretty well all of our time at Broadwater. We nearly emptied our Tarring Shop of goods to make some kind of a show.'

Because the new shop area was vastly larger than what they had been used to and far greater than anything they had ever dreamt of, they needed more than just cycles and spares to fill the newly acquired space. So it was that they branched out into nursery furniture, prams and so on, using a bank loan to acquire new stock.

When the great day arrived for opening, Ernie was almost on his own, helped only by his mother, for Margaret was still working elsewhere. They left John Ruff, a club member, to run Tarring Shop.

The ground floor windows of the new Broadwater shop had been dressed with almost their entire stock well spaced out, leaving the back of the shop and upstairs as an echoing void. To the best of Ernie's knowledge, the first customer to enter purchased a doll's pram, the centrepiece of the nursery window display.

Ernie Meredith's cycle shop in Broadwater Street West in the 1950s.

Ernie soon built up the repair side of the business, and the time came for Margaret to leave her other job and help improve the cycle club trade. As the business grew they took on more help in the shop: three part time ladies, Mac, Edie and Mrs Cranmer.

The Merediths discovered that summer visitors wanted to hire prams and cots, a need they fulfilled and which involved Ernie in some perilous trips on his trades bike, towing a coach-built pram, often with a cot on top, pulling with just one arm. In those days, some 40 years ago, the weekly hire of a pram amounted to 15/- while a cot was 10/- per week.

The next episode of the Meredith saga continues with tales of a show business star who became a customer, and how a novel sporting game was played on bikes.