In 2016 I asked my mother to write down her early memories and was quite shocked by what she wrote – I was surprised at how poor her family was and the problems she had as a young girl. This is what she wrote….

I was born Jean Alice Sainsbury in October 1930 at the Maternity Hospital, 9, Upperton Road, Eastbourne.  My mother was Isabel Alice Sainsbury (nee Dickens) and my father was James Albert Sainsbury.  I do not know anything about my paternal grandparents and never met them.

I was not the first born of Isabel, this was because she had a baby when she was sixteen. He was ‘Tommy’ Dickens.  Afterwards she married Jim Sainsbury and had me followed two years later by Gordon.

Jim Sainsbury was not a good father to me. I don’t remember him having a job and when he went to the dole office in Seaside I had to wait outside for him. We then lived at 2, Command Road, Old Town. This was a three bedroomed council house with an inside bathroom and toilet. The house was semi-detached and was on a corner plot with an apple tree in the garden. 

I went to school in Dacre Road Infants and my first teacher was a Miss Fox who wore big ear-rings. We had milk in small bottles in the morning and had to sleep in the afternoon, each of us lying on a rush mat on the floor.   I then went to primary school in the High Street (now made into homes) When I first went there I remember going to the toilets outside and getting lost and I couldn’t find my way back into the school.   

I later went to school in Brightland Road. My teacher was Miss Sogno. As the school was across the main road and we had a man to help is over the road. I remember he had a moustache.  As we waited he would say “What’s your teachers name?” And we would say ‘Miss Sogno’ and as we crossed the road he would sing

Old Miss Sogno’s a funny old girl,

She teaches all she can,

Read, write and arithmetic,

She never forgets to give you the stick,

When she does, she makes you prance,

Out of England and into France,

Out of France and into Spain,

And over the hills and back again!

We thought this was very funny. 

Isabel was not a good mother. She would go out with different men and often left me and my brother alone in the house, sometimes for days at a time.  We were not left much to eat so we would often walk up to St Elisabeth’s Church to get free soup. It was usually thick with loads of pearl barley in it. I remember the large tapered enamel jugs that the soup was poured from.

It was horrible going into local shops and seeing your Mum & Dad’s name on list that everyone could see showing the people who owed the shopkeeper money. Because we were poor we had vouchers for free shoes.  Isabel took me to the shoe shop in Church  Street called Swadlings. (it was pulled down and St Mary’s Court is there now)  I remember asking the man in the shoe shop for a pair of shoes like Shirley Temple wore as all the other girls at school had them. I was told that the voucher would only entitle me to a pair of substantial black lace-up shoes. 

St Mary’s School had a uniform I had to wear a gym-slip with 3/4 length socks. If you went to Church Parade you would sit at the front. Isabel couldn’t afford a school beret for me so she sewed a school badge onto an old black beret.  At Church Parade I went to sit at the front with the other girls but was told that because I was not wearing an ‘official’ beret I would have to sit at the back of the church.  So much for Christian charity! 

Because we were so poor, my aunts, who were very good to me, bought me my clothes. Every Sunday Isabel would walk us across to East Dean to my Grandparents,  Emily Alice Dickens (nee Hemsley) and Thomas Dickens.  Some days we would walk up Went Hill and down to Birling Gap for the day. Nannie would make sandwiches and we would have dinner and tea there. I would be sent up to ‘The Hut’ to get ice-cream. In those days it was quite a long way from the edge but now the cliffs are gradually eroding.  The Hut used to sell everything including toys and food and I enjoyed going there.  The toilets were the type where you put a penny in and went through a floor-to-ceiling turnstile.  I sometimes got stuck in it!

I loved going to Nannie and Grandads as we got lots of loving and good food there.  When I was about seven I moved in with them as my parents couldn’t look after me properly. My brother stayed in Eastbourne.  Nannie and Grandad were a lovely couple. I never heard them rowing or grumbling. Grandad was a baker by trade and they lived in the Old Bakehouse next to the School in East Dean.  The house was shared by the Breach family. Like most in East Dean it was rented from the Davis-Gilbert Estate. 

We lived in the bakehouse where Grandad made and baked the bread. Next to this was the flour store, then the pantry and lastly the kitchen which was shared by Mr and Mrs Nelson Breach and their daughter Betty. She was much older than me. Each family had a paraffin stove but only had one sink to share.  At the front of the house was one room where they lived and ate their meals.  There was a shared staircase and we had two bedrooms each. Nannie and Grandad slept in the front bedroom and I slept in the back bedroom with Dorothy and Florrie.  There was no running water but we had a pump in the back garden. Each family had an outside toilet. This used to have a bucket underneath which had to be emptied every week into a hole up the garden which had been previously dug. We had lovely flowers and rhubarb!!  There was no bathroom and I remember by Nannie washing me all over whilst I sat on the kitchen table. The funny thing was that although we were two families living in the same house we never seemed to get in each other’s way.  Last thing at night either my grandfather or Mr Breach would call out to the house “ALL IN”?  And if the answer was ‘yes’  they would put down a big metal bar over the door to lock us in for the night. 

My Grandad Tom Dickens had married Emily at Burgess Hill in 1904 and they moved to Eastbourne about 1907. They lived at Gore House before they moved to the Bake House. Tom was the baker for Dennett’s Stores. Mr Dennett always wore an apron and his shop smelled lovely. Grandad baked the bread and delivered it around the village in a cart pulled by two horses called Topsy and Bovril. Grandad was also the Sexton at the church and had to pump the organ. At musical evenings in the upstairs room of the Tiger, he would sometimes ‘black up’ and play the bones.  

My grandparents had four children, four girls and a boy.  My mother Isabel, Edie, Tom, Dorothy and lastly Florrie. Isabel married Jim Sainsbury. Edie married John Clark. Tom married Doris. Florrie married Jim Bland, Dorothy never married. 

I went to school in East Dean. This was nearly next door to where we lived. The school had two classrooms but there was a zig-zag partition between them which opened up to make one big room.  The teachers were Miss Turk who had piz-nez glasses and Mrs Vidler. Children had to walk a long way to get to the school, particularly the children who lived at Birling Gap Cottages. They walked to school in all weathers, rain or snow. Sometimes when they got to school they were cold and soaked through and their coats were put over the fireguard of the open fire to dry out for their walk back home.  In the winter sometimes our milk froze so it had to be put next to the fire to warm up. There was no real playground so during breaks we would play out in the road.  The Grayson children were at the school. Lorna, John and Charlie. One day their dog bit Captain Scott who lived next door to the Bake House. I also remember all Miss Bugler’s pageants. 

I would play in the streets or down the ‘Holla’ where we climbed trees. I remember picking Bee Orchids. We used to go to the Gore to see Miss Pindred who would give us sweets or go up the twitten to see Mrs French who would give us her home-made sweets. We would take our old sweet wrappers back to her and she would re-use them. 

Everyone came to East Dean for Christmas and we all had a good time. On Christmas morning we would get up and have a piece of bacon with tomato sauce.  For dinner we had a huge chicken.  Unlike today we all wanted legs and the juicy bones rather than the breast meat. After dinner we always played games like postman’s knock and card games. Our presents were put into stockings. We usually were given an orange but one year I was given a black doll.  I never played with dolls and didn’t like it.  We also had a magic lantern with glass slides. 

Doctor Bodkin-Adams would call in on us on his way to see Miss Craddock. Dorothy would prepare a meal for him when he visited. This was the same doctor who was arrested for murdering lots of elderly widows in Eastbourne.

My Grandad died in 1938 in St Mary’s Hospital in Eastbourne. He was buried in East Dean churchyard. He was well liked in the village and ‘laid in state’ in the bakehouse in his coffin.  All the villagers came to pay their respects. I had never seen a dead man before and uncle John (who I later called Dad) held me up to say goodbye to him. He was only about 60 years old.  Aunt Florrie took my brother and I up onto the fields above our house as we were not allowed to go to the funeral. The total cost of the funeral was £19 and 2 shillings which included ‘ruffle and face cloth trimmed with white satin and mauve silk cords’

I will publish part two of my mothers memoirs (the war years) shortly.