“We started on a Sunday,” remembers Mrs Palmer. “It was April 14 1969. We had come down from Bermondsey and we told people we would be setting up the last of the stock, if they wanted to drop in. By 10am they were hammering on the door and we were in business.”
At that time, they were just one of scores of antiques shops in the Lanes. The rent was 25 shillings (£1.25) a week and their shop front had changed very little since the turn of the century.
Today, the Palmers’ three storeys of antiques stand out among the
jewellers and other businesses that have moved into the area.
“We keep going with the shop,” says Mrs Palmer. “We now do Olympia and the Decorative Fair as well, but the tradition carries on and my granddaughter was recently photographed for an American magazine in exactly the same position as the little Edwardian girl.”
Still thriving in memory Lanes
ANTIQUES shops come and go (and plenty have gone in recent years) but some seem to trade on forever. It is 100 years since this little girl was photographed outside the bookshop at 7-8 Union Street, Brighton, right, where Dermot and Jill Palmer are now preparing to mark their 35th anniversary dealing in antiques from the premises.
