‘Chatfield’s, in the front on West Street, was so raucous and so loud and to some people’s taste so disgusting, they would walk down and say, ‘How horrible!’ Other people would say, ‘Let’s go in and look at it, let’s see.’ Everybody was smoking, you couldn’t see across the place for smoke. It was low, but it was quite fun. It always got very crowded. There were two bars, one was Dennis’s bar, Dennis ran it, he was gay and everybody knew Dennis. The other bar was mainly the entertainment side. You got a mixture of people, I mean it was a very rough bar, there was a criminal element, you got crooks in there, not very nice people but the police never closed it down because, if they wanted to look for somebody, they would always go into Chatfield’s.
A lot of the clientele were sailors, but of course in sailors uniform, so they were quite easy to spot, and invariably, if they came over from Pompey for the weekend, they had no accommodation. So the great thing was, anybody who had a flat or a house with a floorspace, would probably go down to Chatfield’s and chat up a sailor and take him home for the weekend. The sailor was satisfied! The Brightonian was satisfied! And everybody enjoyed it.
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