By Gwen O’Sullivan

My name is Gwen O’Sullivan. My full name is Gwendolyne, but I’m not often called that, mainly Gwen or Gwennie. I was born in Buckingham Road maternity hospital. My ancestors have been coming to this church since it was built in the early nineteenth century.

My great-grandfather William David Neve, known as Bill, was born on 17 October 1887 on North Road. He was the son of David Neve, a master carpenter and Jane (née Carrington), who had married at St Peter’s on 6 July 1882. Bill was christened in St Peter’s Church on 4 December 1887, as were his three siblings, Cecilia (June 1883), Wilhelmina (November 1890), and Jane Hilda (February 1895). Their mother Jane died shortly after Jane Hilda was born. David remarried in April 1899 to Sarah Ann Hole in a second ceremony at St Peter’s.

Bill’s aunt, his father’s sister, Mary Ann Neve was born in 1854 in Brighton with no hearing or speech. One of her sister’s employers, Miss Henrietta Crofts, paid for Mary Ann to attend a special school for the deaf and dumb on Eastern Road. There she met Frederick Burton, who was also deaf and without speech. They married at St Peter’s Church on 18 October 1880. Frederick, a painter, and Mary Ann, a dressmaker, had four speaking and hearing sons. They were Bill’s cousins. One of them, Charles, attended the double wedding of Bill and his daughter Beatie to their respective fiancés. He was Bill’s witness.

In 1941, Bill’s daughter, Beatrice Amelia Neve, known as Beatie turned 21and started to plan her wedding to her 28-year-old fiancé Reginald Percy Catling, known as Percy. Percy was in the Army, serving during the Second World War. As it was wartime, arranging a wedding was challenging as clothing and food, including sugar and eggs for a wedding cake, were rationed. Fortunately, Beatie was a good organiser, cook and seamstress, later making her own glamourous gowns for ballroom dancing, which she taught at Butlins Hotel, Saltdean.

Beatie still lived at the family home on Southall Avenue in Moulsecoomb. Her mother Harriet, Bill’s first wife, had died in childbirth delivering Beatie, who was their fourth child. Bill, a petty officer in the Royal Navy, lived there but he was often away for long periods of time. For a year the children were fostered by Mr and Mrs Frederick Baines. Now a widower, Bill married again to Eveline ‘Eva’ Baker, a former sweetheart. He would have needed help looking after his two sons and two daughters, and they had a daughter Evangeline called ‘Babs’ together. However, Bill was widowed for a second time in 1940 as Eva died of cancer.

Then, aged 53, Bill announced he was to marry a third time to Lilian Brittany Gibbs, herself a widow, who was also 53 and working as a caretaker. By this time all his children had grown up. Bill informed Beatie, “We’ll have a double wedding, it’ll be cheaper!”

Beatie told me she was furious that her father had hijacked her big day. She was a very strong character, like him. She would have tried to put her foot down, but the double wedding went ahead on Sunday 3 August 1941 at St Peter’s Church.

In the wedding photo, Bill is in naval uniform standing in the middle with Lilian Gibbs, Percy and Beattie on his other side. Bill’s second oldest son Cyril is standing just behind him. His eldest son Bill was there in his naval uniform behind Beatie. Beatie’s niece, my aunt Ruth Styles who was then aged 12, was a bridesmaid with Beatie’s half-sister Evangeline (Bill’s daughter from his second marriage) who was 20. Percy’s sisters Mabel (34) and Ada (20) were another two of the bridesmaids standing behind him. Percy’s mother Charlotte Catling was behind Mrs Gibbs. The Catlings were a Brighton-based family who lived up by the station. Their father Frederick Catling was a railway worker.  Mrs Gibb’s daughter-in-law is on the left holding a bouquet.

My dad Roy, Bill’s grandson and Beatie’s nephew, was also at the wedding but isn’t in the picture. He was eight at the time and I think he had done something to embarrass his mother Lilian, doing what boys do. Lilian was Beatie’s older sister. Dad, who was also christened at St Peter’s, always referred to Bill’s third wife as Mrs Gibbs. He never knew her first name at that time.

He said with Bill being away a lot, the family home was an all-female environment, and when Bill returned – he was quite a stern man, strict – he interrupted their routines. I know that after the wedding they went back to the family house on Southall Avenue and took photos in the garden, before continuing the celebrations at a local pub.  There were pubs on nearly every corner in those days.  Bill was musical and would play the piano and accordion. Bill liked to take pictures and develop them himself, leaving them to dry on windowsills.

My dad has a few memories of the war in Lewes and Brighton.  One time, he and a group of other children were at Morley Street children’s clinic, not far from St Peter’s, being treated for scabies or impetigo, skin was scrubbed red raw, when a bomb dropped on the building. He was in a group at one end and some children and adults at the other end of the building were killed. He later learnt that the air raid took place on 29^th March 1943. He also remembers Beatie dragging him once a week to the public baths on Cobden Road in Hanover, where it was one price to have a bath with hot water, another with soap, and probably another with towels.

Mrs Gibbs died in 1945, also of cancer. Bill went on to marry for a fourth time to Jessie Fidler, the widow of a petty officer he knew, before he died in 1956. Beatie and Percy had one son Reggie, divorcing some years later. Her half-sister Babs married a Canadian solider in 1945 and emigrated.

I’m very fond of this church. A lot of my family history on both my parent’s sides are tied to it and I don’t suppose there have been many double weddings there.