Mr Beenie came to the UK in 1967 from Gujar Khan, Pakistan. He started working for Gatwick Cars in 1979 and retired in 2017. Q. What other ethnic groups were at Gatwick? When I started working there were mostly English drivers, one Moroccan guy, a few Pakistanis and Indian. In…
Q. What year did you arrive in England? I arrived on the 23rd January 1967 from Azad Kashmir Q. What year did you start at Gatwick Cars? I started in 1984 and then left in 1991 – due to the Gulf War. I relocated. Q. What did you enjoy about…
Growing up in Crawley in the 1970s I knew only two people that were a different colour from me, and they were brother and sister. My primary school was therefore almost 100% white. Indeed it was so white, on one fateful day in 1976 I found myself being held down…
I moved to Crawley fifteen years ago, having lived in Manchester for five years before doing so, and the first 31 years of my life in Leicester. I had pre-conceived ideas of what Crawley as a new town would be like. When I was small I had relatives in Milton…
Caroline Haslett at the Signing of Youngmans lease, September 1949. Suffragette and women’s equality campaigner Caroline Haslett (1895-1957) was born and grew up in Three Bridges. She went on to champion the role of women in the world of mainstream employment – particularly engineering – by their emancipation from domestic…
My family moved into the house next door to Robert Smith in about 1974 when my son, Steven, was 13 and Robert was 15. They obviously knew each other, as neighbours, but did not move in the same circles because Steve went to Hazelwick school and Robert went to St…
I remember when I first heard The Cure. It was March 1979. A friend played me ‘Killing an Arab’ and introduced it to me with the words ‘they come from Crawley!’ The local music scene at that time had certainly never seen or heard anything like it. I was amazed.…
We arrived in Crawley to set up home immediately after our marriage in September 1967. At that time Crawley still had that intangible ‘New Town’ feel to it. We have both qualified as librarians that summer. David became Technical Librarian at APV on Manor Royal, whilst I took up the…
Moving to Crawley New Town from Twickenham in an upstairs flat over a shop was WONDERFUL. In those days we actually had a choice of three 3 bedroom houses in Pound Hill, the area chosen by hubby who had to travel daily to work, till “our turn”. Taking son Andrew,…
Catering at Gatwick Airport Having my own second-hand motor scooter enabled me to find part-time work at the rapidly expanding Gatwick Airport. The North Terminal of the airport and rebuilt Gatwick Racecourse station had been opened by the Queen in 1958 and throughout the 1960s it catered for the growing…
