Royal Celebration YHA Memories Highdown Heights! Sussex Seaside

Sir: On 21st April glasses were raised in a champagne toast as members of the General Montgomery Chapter of the Daughters of the British Empire in New Jersey gathered at an afternoon tea to celebrate the 90th birthday of Her Majesty the Queen (see photograph below).

The event included a Queen-related trivia game and members provided royal memorabilia to decorate the tea room, including the beautiful photo of Her Majesty featured on the cover of the spring issue of This England. — JANET TINZ,

LEONIA, NEW JERSEY, USA. *What a delightful celebration. It looks like a marvellous time was had by all. Her Majesty’s 90th birthday celebrations feature in our special “Happy and Glorious” publication, see page 31. — Ed. Sir: Not long after reading “Holidays with the YHA” (Summer 2016), I came across my two international Youth Hostels Association cards dated 1961 and 1962. They were used when I was hitch-hiking around Europe, south England, Wales and Ireland (1961) and Europe (1962).

I arrived in England in November 1960, having travelled from South Africa on the first of the Union-castle Line ships chartered by the Overseas Visitors Club, and stayed at their club in Earls Court before finding work and other accommodation. Those were the days when work was easy to get, travel was simple and one felt safe taking lifts from complete strangers.

We were joined by fellow citizens from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. I am so grateful I was able to experience all the wonderful opportunities to explore and see the world in the early 1960s.

Thank you for This England as every edition brings back memories of my three years in England where I met and married my Canadian husband before moving to Canada. We have returned for many happy holidays and hope to again before too long — though no more hostelling for us! — Sir: “A Return to the Cold War... on the Isle of Wight” (Summer 2016) revived many memories. I thought your readers might be amused by the following eyewitness account.

During the early stages of the Black Knight testing at Highdown, a group of people I was involved with in the design and manufacture were invited to view the initial testing of the emergency fire-fighting system installed in the towers. We assembled on the access road alongside one of the control bunkers, together with the ex-naval contingent in charge of the complex. The full-height doors of the tower were opened to expose the interior, minus the rocket. With proper naval language (lots of “Roger, wilco” etc.), the order was given to the team in the blockhouse to start the pumps and open the main valves. With much anticipation we leaned forward to see thin streams of water emerge in arcs from four narrow pipes. This caused much laughter and comment, but it was soon followed by the entire internal spaces of the tower being filled with a maelstrom of water that was very impressive.

I was standing to one side of the group and could see the pipe work and valves feeding the torrents of water. All of a sudden, one of the large diaphragm valves blew its top sending a powerful jet of water into the sky. I drew the leader’s attention to this and naval language of a different sort was used to tell the bunker team to shut the thing off!

Some little while later, the valve came back to earth with a clatter and someone was heard to remark that it probably went higher than the rocket ever would! — Sir: I much enjoyed the article about East Preston in Sussex (“Portrait of a Village”, Summer 2016). It brought back memories of happy times spent there before the war. As a family we were introduced to Angmering on Sea by colleagues of my father who bought two

houses there in the late Thirties. We were very lucky as they kindly let friends make use of the house for holidays, it was an ideal place for small children.

The Willowhayne estate to the west had a number of very large houses of individual designs. Several of them were owned by film and theatre personalities: Edith Day, Will Hay and Moore Marriott.

I remember our last visit as a family during the war when the shoreline was covered with scaffolding barricades. My elder sister, then a WRNA Officer on leave and a keen swimmer, was not pleased. The small coastguard cottages were unoccupied and an enquiry from