Most of the buildings visible in this view have since been demolished to make way for the widened road and improved station forecourt.
The illuminated Restaurant sign belongs to Rabaotti’s, an establishment I used a lot in my visits to the area. I wasn’t aware at the time, but it seems to have been established by Bartolomeo Rabaiotti, who had a tragic fate. Arrested along with many other Italians and Germans at the beginning of the war, he was being deported to a camp in Canada on the Arandora Star, sadly torpedoed off the coast of Ireland by a German U-boat in July 1940.
