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The Belmont Badge

An Outsider'sView of Belmont

Sent: Thursday 13th October 2005
Subject: An Outsider's View of Belmont
by William Lovell

I grew up in London Road, Hassocks in the 1950's. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Belmont was a destination for Sunday walks with parents across the fields from Friars Oak. Earliest memories are of grim, grey concrete from the footpath and of peering into an enclosed world, not part of our everyday lives.

The freedom of a 1950s boyhood often meant that Belmont was a 'place to go'. In spring we would go birds nesting round the boundary and sometimes inside. A wren's nest in the thick hedges near the cricket field, a woodpecker in a hole in an oak tree or a moorhen on the small pond on Belmont Lane, all gave moments of excitement.

In Summer, we heard of bolder youths who had gone skinny dipping in the Belmont swimming pool, taking girl friends with them if boasts were to be believed. Sometimes, walking down the lane, there would be cars delivering pupils or visiting for sports days. This was at a time when there was hardly any family with a car in the 60 council houses down London Road and only two houses with the H aerial on the roof to boast a TV set.

Belmont was a different world.

In autumn, Belmont was THE place to go for conkers. The great horse chestnut trees on the Friars Oak side of the school were always a reliable source but even more fun was a battle with conker husks in the woodland down the side of Belmont Lane. Then onto Bonfire Night, when we would watch the school fireworks from afar, before having our own bonfire using great quantities of wood dragged from Belmont's hedgerows.

One summer, when exploring with a group of friends inside Belmont's boundary we were disturbed by some of the 'inmates' and made a run for it with the cry of 'Village Kids' echoing through the trees. We got out into the ploughed field and knowing the boundary wasn't as porous for the schoolboys we stopped and taunted them, then began lobbing clods of ploughed earth into the trees. They tried to throw a few lumps back but we had an unlimited supply standing on the ploughed soil and it wasn't long before we tired of the unfair advantage that gave us such a complete victory!

I moved away from Sussex in 1971 by which time my visits to Belmont were strictly on the footpath and far less frequent. When, around 1980, I learnt that the school had gone I was saddened by the passing of something that had seemed so immoveable.

To those of you who may have been boys there in the 1950s, greetings from one of the village kids! Although you represented a world that we could not imagine, I hope we did you no harm.

WILLIAM LOVELL
East Sussex

Mr Lovell is happy to hear from any former pupils who would like to make contact with him.
His email will be provided on application to enquiries@ .. (as on the front page).