Hello from Lancing to Alan Marshall in Tasmania. Thank you for sharing these wonderful memories. I have formatted your text with subheadings and corrected some punctuation to make it easier to read.
School Days
David, thanks for all those wonderful memories you have brought back to me. I am somewhat younger than yourself (I was born in 1941), but I do remember the old school room, and Mrs. Thomas used to teach there. The name Miss Allman, I think she became Mrs. Horne. At that age, I had no idea of people getting married and changing their name!
Michael Ayling was in my class at school. I attended there from about 1946 to 1952. The "new" dining room and kitchen were built at the top northern side of the playground, close to the bicycle shed. I will always remember the horrible smell of grease and food waste oozing out of the waste pipe from the kitchen, and that horrible minced meat, hard potatoes, and spinach! It was an awful taste for a 7 or 8-year-old.
Wartime Memories
The Morrison Shelter we had (in Grafton Gardens) was built underneath Mum and Dad's bed. We were taken there to sleep for the night whenever the air-raid sirens sounded. Several went off at the same time, giving a discordant, painful wail, all beating against each other and setting the tensions. We as kids did not know the significance of the tension, but on looking back, our parents had a hard time of it, didn't they?
I was born in a little wooden shack up the top end of Upper Boundstone Lane, just below the fence of the cemetery. A bungalow is built there now, in the corner where there's a bend in the road.
Back to the war years, and I was only almost 4 when it ended, but my main memory is of very quiet nights, very dark because of no street lamps. If any vehicle drove past in the night, it was always very slowly. And if a bomber flew over, it was spine-chilling and would keep me awake! Apparently, the Heinkels were twin-engined and not well synchronised. Even now, the sound of a piston-engined aircraft in the night brings back all those memories.
The Marshall Nursery
My Dad and his Dad (Percy Marshall) and Denis, his brother, had the nursery where Boundstone School is now. Boundstone Lane then really was a "lane"—a rough road with lots of puddles to splash in (and frozen over in the winter of 1947). The structure of that road, when upgraded, would have been very strong. Lots of flint, old bricks, etc., went in as foundations, and the top tarmac was compacted with a steamroller. I watched all that work with great interest.
Playing in Lancing
The Brooks, at the western end of Tower Road, was a favourite playground for us, where we would catch minnows, sticklebacks, and tadpoles. When the bridge over the railway at Western Road was being built, I watched them putting in the piles with a huge, noisy vertical ram. They raised the ram up to the top of the crane's jib, then let it fall at great speed onto the piling, which was gradually driven down into the subsoil.
Well, there are so many little things that come back once I get started. I hope these few lines do the same for others who read this.
Greetings from Down Under.