Peter's puppets

These figures were sold at virtually every shop and stall on the lower promenade and displayed on special stands alongside sticks of Brighton rock and "kiss-me-quick" hats.

The picture shows three I've managed to find. Mr Punch is in the centre, a guardsman on the left and a strange, quirky pixie or something is on the right.

Many other seaside resorts sold them too, including Blackpool.

Only a few people contacted me about their production (not surprisingly, as it was a small, almost "cottage" industry) but they gave enough information to put together the story.

The firm that made them, Peter's Puppets, first started in either the late 1940s or early 1950s from a shed in Whitecross Street (this street was demolished in the late-1960s). A Mr Sydney Smythe was the owner.

The firm later moved to larger premises on the western side of Hollingbury Road, near the top, behind the houses, where the puppets were still made but the firm now operated mainly as stove enamellers under the name of Hollingbury Finishers Ltd.

Mrs R Feast wrote to me: "We used to make them by the hundreds and the material parts were also made as well in the same premises. We also used to produce Pompadour heads, which were for lamps - they were also hand-painted."

When Mr Smythe died, a Mr and Mrs Fairchild took over. Then the business was bought by a man named Baker who transferred it to Phoenix Way, Lewes, and making the puppets was discontinued.

Baker's son, Andy Baker, who now runs the firm as Lewes Coatings Ltd, paint sprayers and stove enamellers, remembers helping make the puppets as a child and a number are still stored in his premises.

He might be sitting on a fortune. There is huge interest in old puppet figures at the moment, particular those made by the firm run by Bob Pelham of Marlborough, Wiltshire.

Some early examples of his figures are fetching hundreds of pounds at auction and prices are rising all the time.

I wonder if Peter's Puppets of Brighton could now be valuable?

-Chris Horlock, Shoreham