One of the mysteries from Brighton's past is captured in a photograph from the Thirties showing a wall of what was known locally as "The House of Skulls".

Does any reader even vaguely remember hearing of it?

The wall was in the side of a printing works in Robert Street, off North Road, which was taken over by Southern Publishing in the 1920s. This, of course, is where The Argus was produced for many years before the move to Hollingbury.

Before the printing works were built, a foundry occupied the site in early Victorian times. At some point, there was a huge explosion that killed nine workmen.

There is nothing particularly unusual in that. There were few safety regulations then and accidents were probably regular occurrences.

However, you'd have thought the bodies would have been blown here, there and everywhere but they weren't. Eight of the men were found lying face up in a perfect circle, feet pointing inwards, arms more or less at sides, legs straight, with hardly a mark on them.

The ninth body, of the foreman, was outside the circle and "upside-down" to the others.

The owner of the works, a man named Cheeseman, decided to erect a strange memorial to the men in the form of the miniature skulls set into the wall. The top skull represents the foreman, so is upside down. These skulls, facing the houses on the other side of the street were in place for something like a hundred years.

The mystery is what happened to them. The wall came down 70 years ago, in 1934, and local papers report the skulls would be reinstalled somewhere else in the building.

So were they put back but then inadvertently lost during the conversion work that has taken place since The Argus left?

Or are they still there, inside the new building, arranged in a circle again, perhaps hidden in a secret chamber, or some special place that hasn't been disturbed?

-Chris Horlock, Shoreham