Bouncing Bomb Speaker
by Harry Pope The year was 1963, I was a 16 year old still at school with a part time job in a local hotel as barman, waiter, and...
My grandmother’s grandmother
by Harry Pope My grandmother was born in south London in 1891. She wrote these words as family history when she was 74, which I transcribed onto my computer....
Sad Seaside Victorian Hotel
by Harry Pope You may have read or seen on media outlets about the Claremont Hotel in Eastbourne on the south coast. It suffered a major fire mid-November 2019,...
No wise Men in the Workhouse
by Harry Pope Eastbourne had a workhouse, and there is an online census of 1881. This includes everyone who lived there, with their occupations. One person is listed as...
How to Build a Victorian Theatre
by Harry Pope. The letter started Dear Mr. Phipps, We are a group of Eastbourne businessmen, and wish to attract visitors to our lovely resort town by providing them...
Don’t Give the Beggars Any Money
by Harry Pope …So said our coach driver as we approached the drop-off point in Lille last Saturday, which was the first in December 2019. We had come from...
Harry’s Ramblings; I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside
A Monday stroll in November by the seaside is a wonderfully invigorating exercise. Not too many people about, the main body of tourists are long gone home, back to...
Harry’s Ramblings; Claremont story
The smell of burning building lingers on the seafront air five days after the conflagration that came very close to destroying the early Victorian Claremont Hotel in sedate Eastbourne....
‘Where am I going next, doctor?’
The young trooper was lying in a makeshift hospital bed, about five miles back from the Front, superficial shrapnel wounds and lots of bandages around his left leg. ‘Summerdown...
Is there anybody there?
Items moving mysteriously, things disappearing one day to somehow magically return a few days later, strange smells, all the signs of a haunting. Elms Avenue, Eastbourne, is a road...
Grisly Crumbles Murder
‘You do love me, don’t you Pat?’ ‘Of course I do.’ ‘And you will leave your wife, won’t you?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Before the baby comes‘ ‘My darling girl, you...
Harry’s Ramblings, Split
Next to Italy, on the eastern end of the northern Mediterranean, there used to be a country called Yugoslavia. This part of the coast has been fought over by...
Harry’s Ramblings; Talking on Norman
It is great fun being a cruise ship lecturer, because you get to choose what you are going to talk about. My theme on the Oceana was ‘They Made...
Harry’s Ramblings; Sussex on Fire
We have all been to bonfire displays over the years, but the county of Sussex has a strange phenomenon – Bonfire Societies. They do spread a little into neighbouring...
Harry’s Ramblings; Steampunk Oddities
If you Google in the word Steampunk, the definition comes up as “ a style of design and fashion that combines historical elements with anachronistic technological features inspired by science...
Fishbourne Roman Palace bigger than the Queen’s
“Now come on lads, we have to lay a new water main across this field. East peasy, type of job we’ve dug hundreds of times before, we’ll be finished...
An idiot in the Workhouse
My grandmother was born in 1891, and she visited the Clapham workhouse as a child in about 1900. She had to go there a few times to visit family...
Harry’s Ramblings; Eastbourne’s cinema of dreams
The cinema came to Eastbourne in the 1890s, it’s not recorded where, but it must have been close to the town centre. Eastbourne is one of those strangely traditional...
Victorians with smelly feet
I used to be a volunteer usher at my local Royal Hippodrome Theatre here in Eastbourne, so it was a natural progression to become a theatre guide. It was...
18-19 Harry’s Ramblings. Camera Obscura latest
Eastbourne has a camera obscura atop the building at the end of its Victorian pier. Originally built in 1870, the pier had two previous buildings, both theatres, until the...
Harry’s Ramblings, The Crumbles. A murder in Eastbourne
‘Mum, can I go on holiday to Eastbourne, please. Only for a week’. ‘But Irene, you’re only 17’. ‘Yes, but you let me go to Brighton on my own...
19-19 Harry’s Ramblings. Warners Lakeside
For those unaware, Warners is a holiday company that brings cruising to dry land. They have quite a few holiday park complexes around the UK, specialising in short breaks...
Harry’s Ramblings Eastbourne’s early music hall
Before the railways came to Eastbourne in 1849 on England’s south coast between Brighton and Hastings, it was quite a small series of almost joined hamlets, certainly less than...
Harry’s Ramblings Eastbourne Seafront
This is an hour long stroll along Eastbourne’s seafront from the pier to the bottom of Beachy Head, called Holywell. It is all on the flat, is about 4...
Harry’s Ramblings. Eastbourne Sovereign Harbour
Eastbourne has a reputation for having a population of white-haired seniors, wheelchairs, walkers, miseries sitting on seafront wooden benches waving their sticks as pointers. Yes, they do exist, but...
Harry’s Ramblings – Eastbourne’s alleged mass murderer
Much you are about to read is based on fact. One of Eastbourne’s general practitioner was tried at the Old Bailey in 1957, accused of murdering one of his...
Harry’s Ramblings – Madeira day trip
Madeira is a Portuguese island in the Atlantic about a thousand miles off the northern coast of Africa. It has a population of a quarter of a million, about...
Harry’s Ramblings Tragedy in Eastbourne’s First War
Eastbourne is on England’s south coast, with the town protected by the South Downs five miles inland, Hastings promontory ten miles to the east, and the 600ft cliffs of...
Harry’s Ramblings My First Cruise Lecturing Part 2
We checked into our twin bedded cabin in the crew quarters, resigned that for the next six nights we weren’t going to snuggle up to each other as...
Harry’s Ramblings Cruise Ship Lecturing
The procedure to become a cruise ship lecturer is very selective, but somehow I have managed to become one, taking from December 2018 to June 2019. It started with...
Harry’s Ramblings; Jimmy Greaves stole my magazine
Some years ago, a pal of mine called Stewart was going to a charity lunch in Brighton. He was quite excited, because there were going to be quite...
Harry’s Ramblings. Idyllic Madeira holiday
Madeira is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, about a thousand miles off the northern coast of Africa. Don’t ask me to be specific, it’s not particularly relevant. Many...
Harry’s Ramblings Eastbourne’s Unexploded Bombs
During WW2, Eastbourne on the UK south coast was the most raided town in the south east. Inevitably, some of the bombs failed to explode, with no records kept...
Harry’s Ramblings. The Bombs Fell on Eastbourne
Only three enemy planes dropped their bombs on Eastbourne’s south coast town on Friday 13th September 1940, but they were devastatingly effective in their endeavours. By the time they...
Harry’s Ramblings – Eastbourne’s poor people
Traditionally, which part of Eastbourne do the poor people live in? When the railway came to the south coastal town of Eastbourne in 1849, within twenty years an extensive...
Harry’s Ramblings Petrol in the early 1960s
When I was a lad, we lived in a village called Great Bookham. It wasn’t particularly great, but there was a Little Bookham. Great Bookham and Little Bookham were...
Harry’s Ramblings Eastbourne Carpet Gardens Roman History
There is a public wooden bench close to Eastbourne’s pier. It’s on the end of the Carpet Gardens, you can sit there quite comfortably for hours, breathe in...
Harry’s Ramblings; Eastbourne pier Camera Obscura
Walk onto Eastbourne’s 1870 pier, and you won’t be aware of a hidden history that hides behind locked doors. It’s called a Camera Obscura. The pier was originally built...
The Sheikh’s Pier
Eastbourne pier has a new owner, flamboyant Eastbourne hotelier Abid Gulzar, who is a self-appointed Indian sheikh (the title is a family name apparently). 70 year old entrepreneur...
phone and Pamnav
Today, it is humiliation. Mine. My Galaxy Note phone went wrong, so I took it to Tesco’s. Sorry, they said, it has to be returned to our repair department...