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Archie Greenshields was born in 1920 and brought up in Chichester, West Sussex.
Only part of Tower Street, Chichester, could be recognisable today as it was at the turn of the century. The street was named after the Bell Tower of which there is a clear uninterrupted view from its virtually unchanged southern end. In the 1851 census it is recorded that the occupants were predominantly of the lowest socio-economic groups and the situation had hardly changed in the earlier decades of the present century.
In the early 1950's a massive slum clearance programme commenced and the character of Tower Street was completely changed in a short period of time. Today, the northern half of the street is dominated by the impressive design of the County Council's Technical Block, completely out of character with the older original buildings at its southern end.
This huge building replaced The Grange, a fine old building standing in large grounds, demolished for the sake of modernity. There are however fashionable houses opposite these office blocks, replacing quaint Victorian houses. The house where my grandparents lived was replaced by the rotunda shape of the County's Library Headquarters, at least a reminder of my birthplace ever time I use it.
Up until the clearance scheme there were four Courts leading to a number of tiny houses, Rose Court, Spring Gardens, Hall's Court and Tidy's Court. My mother and father resided at No.2 Rose Court but had the advantage given to them by their landlord when he knocked an entrance to its back to back neighbour in No.2 Spring Gardens, thereby giving them more living space and more room for additional members to their family!
Grandma and Grandpa lived in Hall's Court and their garden's boundary wall was the wool curing sheds of Ebeneezer Prior's business. At times during the summer, the smell from the open windows and doors of the sheds, caught on passing by, could be pretty powerful.
Tidy's Court had only a couple of houses in it. Mr. Tidy carried out his business of mending china in one of them where I liked to watch him drilling holes in large china bowls or dishes so that he could rivet the pieces together using a drill powered by a bow of twisting cord or leather - long before electric drills came on the scene.
At the other house lived a particular school friend, a ginger haired boy called Dick Peskett. He became a paratrooper in the Second World War.
This street is where I was brought up and lived until I was fourteen and have fond memories, my first school, the cathedral with its cloisters, the Westgate Fields, and the lovely North Walls. All of which just a very short distance from where I was born and spent my formative years.
Archie Greenshield, West Sussex, 2001
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