Members are requested to inform the contact for the visits, of their intention to attend at LEAST SEVEN DAYS beforehand. Events may be cancelled or changed at short notice. Please supply contact details so that you may be updated.
Winter events at West Blatchington Windmill, Hove BN3 7LF
Non-members welcome £1.00
David Jones of the Bluebell Railway’s Atlantic Group will tell the story of the reconstruction of LBSCR Atlantic Class H2 ‘Beachy Head’ in a dedicated workshop at Sheffield Park. From the acquisition of a suitable ex-LNER boiler and the manufacture of numerous new parts, to
completion in August 2024 and subsequent entry into traffic on the Bluebell Railway, it became the latest standard gauge steam locomotive to be built in the UK.
Rye Harbour is the oft-ignored cousin of the more famous ‘Ancient Town of the Cinque Ports’-Rye town. Two miles down river it has a short history, being only named Rye Harbour from the early 19 th century, however it has a wide industrial history encompassing a particular form of fishing, the collection of Blue Boulders, gravel extraction, manufacture of concrete blocks, bricks and chemicals, plus a light rail line, harbour facilities and now a complex of recycling plants, with a burgeoning ‘Green Economy’ based on the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve.
Harold William Frankland was born in January 1915 in Burnley. In the early 1930s, the family moved to Broad Road in Lower Willingdon where Harold became a model railway engineer and soon after joined the Birds pneumatic engineering company which had taken over the huge workshop built for the Royal Naval Airship Station at Polegate. He left there to start his own business as a skilled craftsman, making anything required from his garden workshop using tools he had to fabricate himself. Eventually he had to return to Birds and retired from there in 1985! Birds made parts for Lancasters in WW2 and Harold was there, also serving in the Home Guard. He never married but looked after his parents until he was alone, he passed away in 2016. The house's interior remained unchanged for 80 years and I rescued and photographed many of his tools, equipment and household objects.
When visits can be organised details will be posted on this website www.sussexias.co.uk and forwarded to members on our e-mailing list
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Sussex Industrial