Brighton Revisited 3

The main purpose of this trip was to revisit Brighton as the place where my mother-in-law, Kit, grew up.  So after wandering along marine parade and looking at the sea, we headed up Great East Street, avoiding the lure of The Lanes, and along North Street which has always been an important shopping area. It was here that we come to No. 1 Wykeham (said Wickham like in Pride and Prejudice) Terrace.

This gothic looking entrance is quite novel is it not. The terrace is not accessible by road at the front, but merely by this set of steps leading off the path or sidewalk as we call it in North America.

When you see the individual houses in the terrace I think you might have trouble seeing it as a holiday boarding house.  I know I did.

To me it looks more like a small town house.  Here we are looking down the row. These are not large places. The doors are only two windows apart though there are four floors, one you can see within the area, as sort of basement and another up in the eaves with dormer windows in addition to the two main floors.  On our right is number 1 in a sort of tower.  This made it somewhat bigger that those in the flat part of the row. 

I took these views for my children to have a sense of what their Grannie was talking about when she talked about her life growing up.

She lived here until she was married.  She always talked about deciding whether to get a tattoo of a blue bird on her right breast, or to get married (she was known as a bit of a lad as a girl) and I think the decision had something to do with the cost, tattoos being expensive.  Well Sammy, my father-in-law must have talked her out of the tattoo, because later in life she always joked that given her increased girth after seven children, the tattoo would have gone from being a bluebird to a "bloody great eagle".

Personally I think she still regretted that tatto.

As you can see from the shared garden, this terrace is on quite a hill. No, it is not me having had too much to drink, this was taken before lunch. lol.

When Kit talked about walking up the hill to the church on her wedding day, I never imagined this.

By the time we had taken these photos the heavens opened and so we decided to follow in Kit's footsteps. In the photo on the right to the right of the picture is the fence between us and Wykeham Terrace and to the left the is North Street, which eventually took off to London.

So, on her wedding day, September 26, 1931, my mother-in-law walked up this hill in her wedding dress to get married. fortunately it wasn't raining on that day.

But what on earth has this got to do with the Regency, you ask, after my trip down memory lane?

Just wait until you see the church.  Next time......