There are a few reminders in Portslade of when the town ran its own affairs and was a proud place.

The old town hall where the urban council met still stands in Victoria Road. Not far away is the former police station in St Andrew’s Road, while the ghostly bells of fire engines haunt Church Road.

Portslade was a thriving community of 18,000 people, located at the most westerly part of East Sussex and bigger than the county town of Lewes.

But a Government review abolished urban councils in 1974. It meant Portslade was taken over by its neighbour, Hove, which was four times bigger.

There was a clash of political cultures because, while Portslade generally leaned leftwards but was volatile, Hove was as true blue as anywhere in Sussex.

Yet the irony was that Hove turned Labour just before it was in turn swallowed up by Brighton in 1997.

Portslade is also an older settlement than Hove. It started as a village and much of the original fabric remains around the church. The manor, now ruins, is one of the most ancient buildings in the city and is occasionally open to the public.

Portslade expanded in the 19th century and some of the big houses built for rich men still stand in and near Locks Hill.

Just a few hundred yards away is another less ancient house with its own grounds in Easthill Park.

Surprisingly the old convent survives because the nuns on departure sold the site to Emmaus, a charity for homeless people, rather than making a financial killing out of it on the property market.

From the extensive grounds, it is possible to walk through a tunnel into a secret garden of about an acre, a peaceful place in the middle of Portslade.

The town became a centre for heavy industry because its southern flank included part of Shoreham Harbour.

A big employer was the gasworks and many men went there each day in a gassie – a small boat rowed across the harbour which saved them a lengthy walk around the harbour’s eastern edge.

The smell of gas, known locally as the Portslade Pong, affected homes within a radius of about half a mile.

Portslade south of the Old Shoreham Road was a poor place and council houses were built to provide decent homes for families with little cash.

The main shopping centre was in North Street next to the coast road but it gradually moved to Station Road.

Suburbia started to spread in the Benfield area between the wars, with handsome houses overlooking West Hove golf course, but the big expansion came in the 1950s and 1960s.

So many homes at low prices were built in Mile Oak that it became known as Nappy Valley.

Another major change in the 1990s was the building of the Brighton bypass, opposed by many locals because they could hear it but not get on it from Mile Oak. The Hangleton link road caused further urbanisation.

Portslade has a good com- munity spirit with a centre in Church Road and a sports hall in Mile Oak. Its secondary school is now an academy and its primary schools are well liked.

But there is still a feeling among many older people that Portslade would like to run itself once more.