A century on ... and granny's wedding shoes are discovered in Eastbourne

Anthony Grant takes up the story, “As a young boy I would often be brought down to Eastbourne from London to visit my ‘Granny and Grandpa Grant’ at their lovely home in Old Town.

“I have wonderful memories of the smell of freshly baking bread and cakes as we would arrive and the warm welcome they would always have prepared for my sister and me.

“My father would tell me of growing up in Eastbourne before the war and would point out the house in Vicarage Road where he was born as well as the site of his father’s (my grandfather’s) electrical shop, opposite The Lamb Inn.

“Sadly my parents and grandparents have all passed away but my sister now lives in what was the latter’s house.

“We often discover interesting objects from our family history, from photographs of the period to various personal items.

“However, it was a wonderful surprise for me to recently discover a box containing my grandmother’s satin wedding shoes, beautifully preserved in tissue and looking as fresh as the day she wore them. You can imagine my delight, and astonishment, to discover a small note she had written and placed in one of the shoes.

“It stated that these were the shoes she wore on her wedding day at Holy Trinity Church on March 28, 1917 ... almost 100 years ago.”

Mr Grant, 58, who lives in London but is a frequent visitor to Eastbourne, is planning to bring the shoes to the church on that anniversary in memory of his grandparents Rhoda (nee Moorton) and Jack Grant.

He intends to place the shoes in the doorway of the church and photograph them ‘in situ’ where they would have stood exactly a century earlier.

Mr Grant, a former pupil at Eastbourne College, added, “It is the most satisfying twist of fate to have found these shoes at this moment as I am a photographer and film maker and just about to embark on a project about shoe stories to raise money for the Royal Marsden Hospital (where my father died).”