"WAKEY"

Copyright Valerie Martin 2002.

The Wattle House on the Green has been home to many over the years.   At each end of the building were apartments and in the 1920s housed the Wakenham family and the Stringer family and the large upstairs room was used for Council Meetings, also whist drives run by a Mr. Johnson.

Mr and Mrs Frank Wakeham resided there with their five children, Evelyn (known as "Flip"), Rosie, Grace, Frank Junior (known as "Ike") and Robin (known as Roddy)— whose claim to fame I am told was to be the last baby to be born at the Wattle House before it was condemned.

Frank was a Findon character and known as "Wakey" to customers of the Gun Inn where he worked as a long suffering odd-job man from 1922 and saw eight landlords come and go.   He had a deep tanned face.

Frank, who was an ex-naval man, cycled all the way from Nepcote to Shoreham each day to toil on the sea defences where he was a general labourer for Shoreham and Lancing Sea Defence Commission. It is said that in winter and summer he wore an open necked shirt — he did not ever possess a coat.

I often think that it must have been a tight squeeze for Frank to fit his family into half the floor space above the Wattle Store room and one room on the Ground Floor at the back of the building.

Frank Wakeham died in 1964, aged 77.

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