2

William Thomas [2] had the nickname "Trunky" because his large body on short legs resembled a travelling trunk, according to Angela Thirkell’s (grave [13b]) memoir of her childhood in the village, ‘Three Houses’. Lucy Baldwin (see Ridsdale, grave [1]) remembered Trunky Thomas also being known as the King of the Beach; he taught  many local and visiting children to swim by rowing them out attached to a fishing buoy, and demonstrating breast stroke to them from the boat as they attempted to swim back to shore. He is on the right in this picture from 1895, hauling up the bathing machines at Rottingdean Gap [view] with a pony and capstan. 

Lucy Baldwin also recalled that Thomas knew "three words of French - 'depechez de vous'", which he would shout to hurry on a swimming child or any bathing machine users who were slow to get out of the water. Thomas lived at Tallboys [view] (66 High Street), which had been the village Customs House: he kept livestock around the village Green, he had a smokery to preserve fish, particularly mackerel, he owned all the bathing machines in Rottingdean, and was rumoured to be the last smuggler of French contraband left in the village. His working life around the beaches and coastal paths would have made it relatively easy to pick up deliveries from small boats and avoid detection; "Depechez de vous" might have been an expression he learned during this illicit activity that transferred into his everyday life. 

His son, Frederick Thomas, ran the Royal Oak pub [view], and the horse-drawn bus that ran from there to and from Brighton station. The main car park on the seafront road is on the site where the Royal Oak used to stand. 

_{'Trunky' Thomas, pictured right.}

_{The Royal Oak  horse-drawn bus, run by 'Trunky' Thomas' son Frederick.}

_{The Royal Oak pub, now the car park.}