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Messages - Curt32

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The Common Room / Britton
« on: Tuesday 24 August 10 10:37 BST (UK)  »
Wonderful results re Joyce TC Britton! My Grandmother was Elizabeth Britton 1870 - 1960. She was one of three children of William Britton 1826-1871, who pre-deceased his father, also William 1800-1876. By a codicil to his will old William, a landowner of Aldingbourne, Oving and Littlehampton, transferred his dead son's share to the three children of his second marriage. This second marriage was to"deceased wife's sister" ( cf Iolanthe) and old William acknowledges the bastardy of the children. His Executors  overturned the will, and they were contested in Court for the next twenty years. All the Estate seems to have been swallowed up in legal fees in a real "Bleak House" situation. Initial size of Estate and grounds for overturning the will are of interest. I can't access the Archive of local newspapers from Cambridge, but have high hopes of the sleuths of Rootschat. As many Brittons seem to be based in Sussex and we were brought up in Bognor, we would be interested to learn of any connections.
Incidentally, I am also a Jean. Wife of Curt32.   

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Sussex Lookup Requests / Hampton Court, Littlehampton
« on: Wednesday 23 September 09 21:59 BST (UK)  »
House was off road to Wick  and Arundel. Built when? Owned by Wm Britton (1800-76), occupied by his daughter Elizabeth, married to John Barber.

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Sussex / Re: What happened in Rustington and Littlehampton during WW2?
« on: Tuesday 22 September 09 13:52 BST (UK)  »
Legs - Continued
My platoon of Army Cadets included three maimed lads (forearm blown off, eye missing etc). Playing with live ammunition or German butterfly bombs was very common, but I never heard of any Canadian attacking a child. We all felt remarkably safe, not to say exhilarated. I watched jeeps entering the concrete-sided boating lake to test their waterproofing. One of our dens was in deep sand under a smart house behind the beach: it had been fortified against a German invasion. Between the park and the links hotel was a large flat area of ponds, ideal for play and watching frogs. We used to cycle out to view crashed German planes. I remember a Ju87 Stuka on Angmering Wild Brooks. The scaffolding anti-landing barriers were ideal launchers for purloined thunderflashes. The trick was to light two and achieve an airburst over the sea. My mother danced with McIndoe pilots: RAF boys with faces burned off. Not many women could do it.

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Sussex / Re: What happened in Rustington and Littlehampton during WW2?
« on: Tuesday 22 September 09 13:32 BST (UK)  »
Hi Legs
My father was in the Metropolitan Police, and for safety moved his wife and two children to stay first with his mother in Northumberland, then to Rustington to stay with my maternal grandmother in Jubilee Rd. Then we got a council house in Conbar Ave, and my sister and I (DOB1932) attended Rustington school. Later we rented a house in Tennyson Ave. I passed the 11plus and went to Worthing High School, cycling to Angmering station. I joined the Army Cadet Force, and became platoon sergeant at East Preston. The church there had lead caps on the gateposts, covered in lovers' pencilled graffiti dating from WW1 as well as WW2. All troops in the area were Canadian. Between Tennyson Ave and Littlehampton in those days lay open fields. In one the Canadian AA artillery had a Bofors 40mm gun with a poor field of view. They opened fire on a crippled RAF Beaufighter, hitting it as it cleared trees. It crashed in the same field, killing the crew. On another occasion a Spitfire crashed on a bungalow about a mile from our house. In those days concrete roads had been laid to the south-east of our house, but no houses yet built, so we boys had perfect cycling. By Rustington church there was an extensive warren of tunnels, certainly not bombproof. Perhaps practice concealed entrenchments. A burned-out hotel was on the links, which in the lead-up to D-Day had scrambling nets up to the roof. CONT IN MSG 2

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