This article was first published in the West Sussex Gazette on 12/11/92

This article reveals how a Sussex farming family changed tack and moved into the hotel business, the fascinating story emerged from Mr Charles Clinch when he contacted me about his own recollections of a character mentioned recently in these columns -- policeman Bill 'Tiny' Dear.

Charles himself, born at Hambrook near Chichester in 1907, where his parents owned a dairy farm with a mixed herd, said, 'My first recollections were of cows and a retail milk round.'

Being in a country village, his parents took the WSG, and observant Charles noted, 'All my boyhood there was always one particular advert on the front page that attracted my attention.'

It was for a proprietary powder to combat insects that one could sprinkle on clothes when stored in cupboards.

The wording of the advertisement so impressed young Charles that he is still able to reel it off the tip of his tongue, more than seven decades later:

'Keating's Powder kills with ease,

Bugs & beetles, moths & Fleas.

Big fleas have little fleas on their backs to bite 'em,

And little fleas have lesser fleas and so ad infinitum.'

While the Great War was being waged, another advert caught his observant eye: in the Wanted column he read that moleskins were in demand, purchasers being prepared to pay a shilling for each skin.

So, to earn extra cash, innovative young Charles caught many a mole during his adolescence.

During the 1914-18 war years he had to work hard on the farm because, 'They took all the men into the Services, so as a boy I always seemed to be at work on the farm.'

Charles knew Bill 'Tiny' Dear, mentioned on this page in recent weeks, and tells how he came to join the police force, 'Bill worked for one of the two bakers in the village of West Ashling where he lived. It was in the 1920s when delivering bread by horse and cart to a Mr A S Williams at Hambrook Grange, who happened to be the Chief Constable. This customer persuaded Bill to become a policeman by telling him that a tall, strong young man like him should serve in the constabulary.'

According to Charles, it was about two years before that when public-spirited Bill had shown his mettle, for as a strong swimmer he had been involved in attempting to save someone from drowning.

Remembering one of Bill's duties as a policeman, Charles revealed, 'Around 1929 when George V had been very ill, the king went to Bognor to convalesce, staying at Craigwell House, Aldwick, then on returning to London the following spring, it was Bill who rode proudly in front of the royal car on his patrol motorcycle.'

Farming was very much in the family, not only was it the business of the Clinch's, but also of the Wakeford family on Charles' mother's side.

'At the beginning of the century,' he said, 'two of my uncles, Harry and George Wakeford, who were general farmers and market gardeners, had something like five farms at Nutbourne and Hambrook.'

After the first world war, farming in the 1920s became very poor, and so Charles' parents gave up farming and moved into the hotel business, buying their first hotel in Bognor, before moving to Worthing in 1932 to take over the Chatsworth opposite Steyne Gardens.

Today, the Clinch family, through their company, Wakeford Hotels Ltd, own three hotels in Worthing: the Chatsworth, the Berkeley, and the former Eardley Hotel near Splash Point; as well as Howard's near Arundel.

Charles himself took over the Chatsworth from his mother in 1946, running it until 1966 when he passed it on to the next generation.

Over the years, hundreds of famous celebrities from the theatre, entertainment and sporting worlds have stayed at the Chatsworth. Now, at the grand age of 85, Charles, who, like his parents before him, has taken the WSG all his life, recalls two famous actresses staying at the hotel: Joyce Grenfell and Margaret Rutherford, adding, 'And I remember Acker Bilk and his band staying on another occasion, having been booked-in by none other than the Bilk Marketing Board!'

This article was first published in the West Sussex Gazette on 12/11/92