I too was sad to see the end of Railway Cottages at Beddingham Crossing. Like MP Norman Baker (The Argus, October 7), I once lived there as a child in the early Fifties, in the first of them.

In those days, the cottages were just shells. There was no water, gas or electricity supplies. We used to fetch water from a shed lit with Tilley lamps or oil lamps, cook by the range in the living room, and use a bucket outside as a toilet.

The cottagers couldn't afford to bring electricity down from the farm under the hill for £1,000, which was a lot of money in those days and the people living there were railway folk.

My mother died of Hodgkin's Disease in the front bedroom there in 1954 and, soon after, my family moved to Newhaven.

But I shall always have happy and sad memories of Railway Cottages, Beddingham - they were a part of my childhood.

  • Mrs Pauline Wheeler, Goodwood Way, Moulsecoomb