This is the Seaford Times History page. On here we hope to offer you an insight to our town from the past.
The history articles are either from our own archives, articles from our local newspapers, The Sussex Express and Seaford Gazette, or from the Seaford Times Facebook pages.
I hope you find the articles informative.
We are adding two new history pages soon. One with a written history of the three Seaford cinema’s, and one of the complete history of the Fitzgerald Almshouses in Croft Lane.

The 1980’s was a decade of retirements. Below are five long lasting companies we knew and loved that called it a day. Also teachers from Seaford Head school retire. (From the Seaford Gazette)

After more than 40 years in Seaford G. H. Buckland interior furnishers closed on May 31st 1986.
This well loved Sutton Road business was run by Mr and Mrs George Buckland since 1945, when they occupied just one shop in the road. The business later expanded, taking over two other shop premises..
Their reputation had spread a long way outside Seaford, and the Bucklands have provided furnishings and fitments for homes as far away as America, Kuwait, Zimbabwe and numerous other countries.
The town’s only complete home furnishers, they not only had a showroom selling reproduction, and modern furniture, but also beds and bedding accessories, Staff included two to make curtains and loose covers, two to fit carpets and vinyls and two to re-upholster customers existing soft furnishings.

Peter Sands, Mrs. Nina Buckland, George Buckland, Alan Stone.
(photo Seaford Gazette)

COLIN SEYMOUR RETIRES FROM HIS COMPANY IN MAY 1988.

TWO of the most respected members of the Seaford business community have retired after running the highly respected family electrical contracting firm they founded in the town over 30 years ago. Husband and wife team Colin and Joan Seymour set up C. H. Seymour Ltd after moving to the town from Hampshire, and opened their first shop in Church Street in 1955.  From those humble beginnings, the company has gone on to greater things and now boasts branches in Lewes and Hailsham with swimming pool servicing contracts throughout the United Kingdom.  But their retirement does not spell the end of C. H. Seymour Ltd for a management buy-out means the firm will continue with business as usual.  Ken Holt, former general manager, now becomes the managing director of the company with directors Arthur Snell. John Earl. Aubry Holt and Dr Stathers constituting the newly-formed board.  Not only does the company continue to trade under its original name, the family connection Is not lost either, because Dr Stathers is none other than Colin and loan’s married daughter Lynn.

In the photo. Colin Seymour with the chrome plated electrician’s tool kit presented to him by Ken Holt. and with them is Mrs. Seymour.

JUNE 1988

It was a sad day for Seaford when old family firm J. T. Wood and Sons decided to stop trading. John Wood, like many other newspaper wholesalers throughout the country, has been forced out of business by new distributing methods.
Said John, 49, of Downs Road, Seaford, ‘I was upset when I could not get a franchise but I’m happy to have been taken on by wholesalers T. Cox and Sons. His son Simon  will join him at Cox’s in Eastbourne.
John’s family had operated the business at Warwick Road in Seaford since 1948.

County Hardware will not seem the same without husband and wife team Andy and Barbara Anderson.
The couple have decided to call it a day and sell the hardware store which they have run since 1964.
But the town has not seen the last of Andy .and Barbara. Andy will continue to run his plant hire business called Andy Tool Hire.
The couple moved to Seaford from London where Andy worked as a chemical engineer, and Barbara a negotiator for an estate agent.

Seaford saw ‘the end of an era’ when newsagents Frank Winser and Sons was sold after 92 years in the town.  The family business was started in 1896 by Frank Thomas Winser and his wife who opened small premises in Brooklyn Road.  Their next move was to East Street and then finally High Street in 1914 where the shop has remained till this day.  Frank’s son Frank junior and his wife Gladys took over the shop which in recent years was run by their sons Terry and Barry.  After the death of Barry last November, Terry, 58, and his wife Sheila, 49, decided to call it a day.  Dillons Group has taken over the shop which will be run by Keith and Irene Rowe.  Although Terry and Sheila will miss the customers, it will make a change to have a long lie in after starting work at 5am for many years. It seemed the natural thing for Terry to take over the shop after working with newspapers from the age of 10. ‘When my grandparents moved here originally, there was a front room on the right hand side where all the periodicals were hung and the papers were sold from a small counter.’  Times have certainly changed over the years.  ‘We used to have to print the late cricket results in the papers ourselves in the stop press column but that has long since stopped’ said Terry.  Another tradition in the 1950’s was an annual day outing for the paper boys to Southsea.  The couple, whose four children live in Seaford and Denton, plan to spend more time working in their garden. (Sue Baird)

TEACHERS RETIREMENT PARTY 

Staff at Seaford Head school said a fond farewell to three of their teachers in July 1988. A presentation was made to the three teachers at a party in their honour at the lower school.
Mrs Vera Berry had spent a lifetime in teaching, and came to Seaford Head six years earlier to teach German.  She was given a trinket bowl, a framed photo, and a mock school report from head teacher Mr Keith Carlisle.
Mrs Pat Hillman has been at the school for 24 years. She was first employed as a needlework teacher, but has been working in the lower school in recent years.  She was presented with a piece of Royal Copenhagen porcelain.
Mrs Jean Scott was leaving after 31 happy years, having joined the Seaford County Secondary school under Mr. Frank Price in 1957. She has also been at the lower school over the past few years.  As well as the painting from her colleagues, a presentation was made to Mrs Scott by the children, on their last day of term. They presented her with a flower bowl and a bouquet. 
Special guests at the party included former headmaster Mr Frank Price and past chairman of governors Mrs Ann Thompson.

LESLIE CALLF

Seaford resident Mr Leslie Callf will be off on his yearly visit to Italy this September 1988.  But it isn’t an ordinary summer holiday. Mr Callf, of Church Lane, is going to lay a wreath at the cairn he and three others built as a memorial to those who died on the battlefield at Mount Ornito.  Mr Callf. 72, served with 9 Commando 2 Special Service Brigade, commanding 5 Troop. He attained the rank of Major and was awarded the MC plus bar.   Born in Seaford, Mr Callf returned to the town after the war to run Rosedene nurseries.  Between February 2- 3. 1944, 9 Commando suffered  50 per cent casualties during the battle for the height at Ornito, a remote mountain spot 10 miles south of Cassino.  In 1984 Mr Calif returned to Italy and erected a plaque on a tree by Faito, another battlefield.  In September 1985 he and three of the men who had been in his troop, David Belasco, Tommy Bostock and Leslie Hopkins, returned to Mts Ornito and Faito to build a more permanent monument. The spot they found for the cairn, 30 minutes walk from the most accessible point by car, was the temporary field cemetery after the battle. “You stand up there and there’s some sort of atmosphere,” said Mr Callf.  With help from an Italian friend, Romeo Ciorra, it took four days and 25 tons of rock to build a memorial cairn 5ft high and 12ft in diameter.   A plaque, taken over from England, reads Alla Pace Eterna — To Peace Everlasting.  “When we started everyone said, no-one will go there, it’s too inaccessible,” Mr Callf remembered. But a visitors’ book kept in a niche in the cairn already boasts 120 signatures.  “It is not the easiest of places to visit, but all those who have made the effort agree that it is an unforgettable experience,” wrote Mr Callf in the Commando Association’ s newsletter.  A past president of the association, Mr Callf goes back to the cairn to lay a wreath every September. This year he will take a woman with polio, the last living relative of a man who died there. And Mr Callf intends to return every year for as long as he can. “As long as I can walk I shall go, and after that, our children. I hope, will go.”