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Photo, c1950

Downs Café between 1947 - 1954 (now The Winner pub)

Comments about this page

  • We lived in the Downs Cafe from 1966-1968 and it was extremely haunted-many things happened. We also used to get many naughty “Borstal Boys” in for a breakfast. I was a child at the time and remember being told the cafe was built on a Roman burial ground, can anybody confirm this to be true?

    By Julie Slade (nee Allen) (19/02/2012)
  • In the 50s I would get a number 44 trolley bus from Arundel Road to the top of Elm Grove, wait outside the Down’s Cafe to get the number 2 or 2a bus to Fitzherbert school in Woodingdean in the morning, and in the afternoon after school I would wait for the number 44 trolleybus outside the Down’s Cafe to take me home. The cafe also sold sweets and sticky buns. Drivers and conductors would get their tea cans filled here and take their tea breaks sitting in the bus.

    By Mick Peirson (20/02/2012)
  • Can we hear more of the strange happenings please? I lived in that area as a child; know it well.

    By Jennifer Tonks (20/02/2012)
  • I used to go to get bottles of lemonade and cakes for the Bookmakers on race-days in the ’50s, I think I got paid a tanner each time.

    By terry boyle (28/10/2012)
  • I used to go to the Downs café after working a night shift at the Sunblest bakery in Woodingdean. They used to have a pinball machine in there. would be around 1977-78.

    By Jozef Kis (07/01/2015)
  • Then it must have changed to the Winner Pub soon after 1977-78, I remember it as the pub in 1980 or 81!

    By Peter Groves (08/01/2015)
  • Me being a Dutchman learned to drink Guinness in this pub while I visited the Devil’s Weald Rally of Brighton and District MCC in 1985. Also met a nice Welsh young lady. Just couldn’t understand one single word she said…Happy memories!!!

    Bert Busink.

    By Bert Busink (04/09/2021)
  • Somewhere around the early 1980’s I used to use the Winner as I lived at Bellevue Cottages near the South Down Riding School. What I would like to know is, the owner of this pub was a boxer from London with his wife Alice.
    Would you have heard of them?

    By Diana (28/12/2021)
  • The boxer was Toby. He adored dogs and most nights he would cook pork sausages and take them round to all the dogs in the pub. We had two dogs at the time. It was our local. Alice, his wife was lovely.

    By Peter (22/02/2023)

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