It was obviously built on an odd shaped plot between two lanes so it ended up shaped like a coffin. The idea of someone building a house specifically to make it look like a coffin is an amusing one to tell tourists, but ridiculous.

Yes, they would have used any land available within a difficult terrain to build as close as possible to the harbour.

My mum was born in the Coffin House in 1917 approximately.

Surely .. '' it's the coffin they take you off in'', not supposed to arrive in one!

When we came on holiday in the 70’s there was a shop next to the coffin shop (which was a book shop then) with a man blowing glass in the window.

Wurzel Gummidge was filmed in Brixham and you can see these shops in the background. It was filmed 27th June 1979 but shown in 1980.

I remember that. Got Kenny Baker's autograph.

Old Mr Widger had a Barbers shop in the Coffin House. 1950s, and he really did put a tin bowl on the boys heads.

My brother and I used to have our hair cut in the Coffin House barbers shop by Mr Widger. His style was to put a pudding basin on my head, being a girl, and just cut the hair sticking out from under the basin! I remember it well, that was in the 1940's. We would run up and down Temperance Steps to get to school from Bay View to Furzeham every day.

I remember it being a gents barbers in the 50s. Wooden benches to sit on whilst waiting.

Before Mr Widger had a barbers there, a great uncle of mine had a barbers there, boys hair cut was 1d, if they only had 1/2d he would cut half their hair and say “when you get another 1/2d I will do the other 1/2". Or so the story went.

The Coffin House was a barbers shop when I was young and Sushannas's Boutique was a bakery.

There was a gents barbers on the ground floor of the Coffin House. It was Mr Widger back in the 50's. We got our mortgage from Norman Citrine in 68 and my mother and grand mother were customers in Adams butchers.

My father was born at number 2 Temperance Steps. His name was Joseph Furze Foster. His father was Sam Foster.

Penny often talks lovingly of Uncle Sam and his sea stories told on the harbour wall when she was a child.

Do you know why they were named Temperance Steps?

If you're drunk, you won't get up them.

My parents talked about the same story and how the steps got its name, also meant to be some family connection but not yet found that.

I climbed those steps many a time, wondered why they are called "Temperance Steps" ? Perhaps becuase the drunks sober up by the time they reach the top?

My mom used to tell us ghost stories about the alley/stairwell next to the Coffin House She was born and raised there.

When I was young in BRIXHAM and got sent down Temperance Steps to the shop I always shot past the Coffin House back up. Just in case !!

My parents got friendly with a couple and they were renting the Coffin House. They had a daughter my age and an older brother and I stayed with them while the parents went for a drink. To be in the top room was scary.  I didn't stay long. I'd rather sit on the beer barrels at the back of the Blue Anchor.

I think the house beside the Coffin House used to be the Welfare Clinic where you went for that really thick syrupy Orange Juice and bottles of Cod Liver Oil for the little ones.

Yes I remember going there around 1953 / 54 to collect my brother’s ration of a tin of powdered Cow and Gate milk, 2 small glass bottles of thick real orange juice and a large brown jar (similar shape to today’s marmite jar) of Cod liver oil and malt! The orange juice was delicious, as was the very thick cod liver oil and malt in my opinion!

My grandparents had the bakers at the bottom of the steps and my cousin would spend ages when we were little colouring the tiles outside the shop with chalks. During the Embarkations we sat on the steps and watched the troops go by. They would always throw us some sweets. We were to little to realise what was going on.

The cottages to the right of the steps are called Ostend Cottages.  It could indeed be a WW1 connection and there were Belgian refugees in the area during the Great War (as well as in WW2). Agatha Christie based her Poirot character on a Belgian (policeman) refugee she met in 1914. At the time she was serving as a nurse at the Red Cross Hospital in Torquay Town Hall. There is evidence (through surnames) of Huguenot settlement in Brixham and such migration included Flemish and Dutch protestants. The name Ostend could have Flemish origins in that the building is on a site that was originally considered to be the east end of Fore Street. Of course, Brixham has a Dutch protestant connection through William of Orange. His grandfather (the first Prince William of Orange) had been involved in the Siege of Ostend when the port was regained by the Dutch from the Spanish. Before the 80 years war, Ostend had been jointly administered by the Dutch and English. Before sailing for Brixham, William had amassed his fleet in several Dutch ports and Ostend was a major Dutch port at the time. So it is probable that some of William's fleet had set sail from Ostend for Brixham. But then it may simply be a seafaring connection and Ostend, like Brixham, has a history as a sea fishing port. Some, in Fishtown, may have enjoyed good business with Ostend.

It is still called Ostend Cottages today and I remember delivering post to the solicitor Norman Citrine at Ostend House in the 1960’s. Perhaps it took that name after World War II.

My dad Sid was an electrical apprentice with Brixham Gas and Electric Co Ltd in the 1920's at a time when most of the power supply was by overhead wires supported on poles throughout the town and out as far as Galmpton. 

Tools, equipment and fittings etc were in the cart. I started working for the old West Midlands Gas Board in 1972. The older guys there used to tell me about cycling around with a trailer.

The cart would have had tools meters, and test equipment in it, with ladders being carried on a separate cart. My earliest memory is of a van used by my Dad occasionally, mid-40's. Underground cables must have started to be installed, I would guess, from mid-1930's onwards as our bungalow, built 1934, in Penn Lane only ever had a cable supply.

In St Mary’s Graveyard lies one of the first victims of electrocution.  Young lad electrocuted at the Taunton Works.  Warren Upham killed by shock of electricity aged 17. Buried 12th November 1894.