But the road to which I have alluded in Chapter XIII was not the only one in course of construction at that time, as the following advertisement will show. It runs thus:- "The public are informed that a considerable improvement is now taking place in the turnpike road from Hastings and St. Leonards of London through Battle. A new road from Battle to John's Cross is now actually commenced, by which a saving of one mile will be made and other improvements effected; and, whereas plans and proposals for another road have been laid before the public, leaving out Battle, a public meeting will be held to consider the best means of preventing the road being thus diverted."
Two new Road-bills were thus before Parliament in the month of March, 1836, and an additional project was started to cut a road from near the Hare-and-Hounds, at Ore, to Sedlescombe Bridge, thereby forming a junction with the intended new cut from the Harrow to Whatling Hill. Another project was mooted for a new road from Hasting to Rye, under the East Cliff. This, of course, was never carried into effect.
Coastguard Station built on St. Michaels Rock - Parade Wall breached by the Sea
One of the last buildings removed from the Priory ground was the Coastguard Station, whose site was near the centre of what is now the wall which spans the front of Carlisle parade and Robertson terrace. A more commanding position was obtained for it on Cuckoo Hill, or, as it was sometimes called, St. Michael's rock. The first stone of the new building - the still existing station - was laid on the 14th of April. Nine silver coins were deposited beneath the said stone, but in the following night the stone was raised from its bed and the money carried off. On the following day Mr. George Clement gave an entertainment to Lord Gage the Hon. Mr. Craven, and a number of other gentlemen, in honour of the event. The festivities commenced with a public breakfast, followed until dinner time by fishing, shooting, etc. At the dinner his lordship proposed Mr. Clement's health in a complimentary speech, and while returning thanks, Mr. Clement proposed "The Trade of Hastings."
Another building of the period which even more than that of the Coastguard Station united St. Leonards with Hastings was that of the Union Workhouse, already referred to. It was commenced in the early part of 1836 by Mr. George Luck, the contractor who, ere the work was completed, became insolvent. In the first year after the Union was established the parish of St. Leonards contributed two separate sums of thirteen and fourteen pounds, or a total of £27, as against £91.15s 10d which the same parish paid for the relief of the poor under the old system in 1833. The saving thus effected afforded considerable satisfaction to the ratepayers as a body, although - as before intimated - the new system gave rise to bitter complaints among those who, contrary to their idiosyncrasies, discovered that they were better able to work without parish relief than with it. But the alleged hardships of husbands separated from their wives, and children from their parents, continued to be severely commented upon by a portion of the press as a cruel provision of the new law; and on account of this stringency being attacked with increasing vehemence Mr. Walter, in the following year, moved in the House of Commons for a select committee to enquire into the working of the new Poor-law Act. During the discussion, however, it came out that the saving to the nations generally had been in similar proportion to that which was effected at St. Leonards. Comparing 1836 with 1834 it was shown that ratepayers had been relieved to the extent of £1,794,990; and Mr. Walter's motion was defeated by a majority of nearly two to one. During that year the St. Leonards parish contributed only £40 to the Borough-rate, which sum when compared with the thousands now contributed by the two western parishes, clearly shows to what a giant or giantess the town has grown.
Turning again to imperial as in connection with local matters, it occurs to me that the Parliamentary session of 1836 was opened By King William in person, and with a speech remarkable for the number and variety of topics. Amendments to the address were moved - the one in the upper House being carried without a division, and the one in the Lower House, by Sir Robt. Peel, being rejected by a majority of 284 to 243. Some excitement was caused by these results, and political questions for a time appeared to be uppermost in St. Leonards, both in the fashionable and commercial circles. On the 8th of February, Lord John Russell moved for a select committee to enquire into the causes of agricultural depression; and, a few days later, his lordship introduced three very important measures. One was a Bill for the Commutation of Tithes in England; the second was for a general registration of Births, Marriages and Death; and the third was for the Amendment of the Law of Marriages.
Lord John Russell was more than once at St. Leonards, and during his visits he conversed familiarly with a few of the Resident Reformers. It hardly need be doubted that Mr. Elphinstone, who was then a representative of the borough, gave his whole support to the several reforms proposed by his lordship, bearing in mind that one of Mr. Elphinstone's notices of motion during the session was for the introduction of a Bill to render the register of electors in England and Wales final; and that another of his motions was to disfranchise (sic) the freemen of Great Yarmouth.
I have before referred to Mr. Elphinstone's efforts to benefit his constituency, and to that may be added that in 1836 he obtained from the Lords of the Treasury a grant of £250 for the British Schools in Waterloo place; and, with the aid of Sir Eardly Wilmot - a frequent resident at Pelham Place - he succeeded in his efforts to get off the impost of a penny additional to the ordinary postage on letters delivered in the St. Mary's district of Hastings 0 that is to say such part of the parish as lay westward of George street, commonly called "off the stones."
At the Epiphany Quarter-Sessions of 1836 a presentment was made by the Grand Jury that the highway at St. Leonards from Stanton Noakes's house (The Fountain Inn) to the New Market, lately built by Mr. Burton, was "narrow, dangerous, and improperly left. that it ought to be 30 feet wide, and that a proper hand-rail or fence ought to be made on the north side, to prevent danger in passing over the raised causeway where the road had been lately diverted; also a rail or fence on the north side of the road from the Sussex Hotel and the new houses recently erected eastward of the same." The new houses here referred to were Nos. 65 to 70 Marina, between which and the hotel, space was left for the forty additional mansions which were built at a later period, and for which the area vaults were constructed when the new road was formed. For a considerable period, these vaults served as receptacles for all sorts of refuse, and some of them were used by the chimney sweepers as depositories for soot.
On the top of the arches was an unpaved footpath, level with the road, and which being without any kind of protection to the public, there was danger - especially on a dark night - of pedestrians, and even vehicles - falling over to a depth of nine or ten feet on to the debris of a crumbling cliff. The other dangerous space named in the presentment was what is now the site of Nos. 128 to 146 Marina. It was, in fact, the old disused road, on the land side of the new road, and averaging about eight or nine feet below the latter. Of course the nineteen houses here named were not then built; and when I say that at spring-tides the sea used to flow over the new road and form an almost perpetual pond on the old road, so that boys and men could exercise themselves with boats and rafts, my readers will be able to judge the risk of flooding which the owners of that extended line of houses encountered when, with a knowledge of this condition, they put basements to their property right upon the low ground so constantly or so frequently under water. It was a want of prudence for which they paid many subsequent penalties, yet in this they were but the prototypes of the Hastings builders, who at a later period, exhibited similar indiscretion on the St. Andrew's Brook Estate. When I say that the then unbuilt houses were 128 to 146, I mean as they are now numbered; for as it was afterwards judged desirable to build eleven houses more between the church and the hotel than the ground was first laid out for the house which is now 127 was 116 in the year 1836, and was also the farthest house then existing in that direction. But nearly all that range of houses remained more or less untenanted for considerable periods, in consequence of the inroads of the sea, and such was also the case with those in the rear, which constituted what was then known as the New Market, but now more familiarly recognised as the Old Market, in contradistinction (sic) to some houses and shops which, under the name of the New Market were built two years later, and close to the late Archway. The said New Market is now known as Market street and Market terrace.
To the credit of the St. Leonards Commissioners it should be noticed that they lost no time in attending to the grand jury's presentment, instructions being at once given to fix a guard of poles all along one part of the endangered traffic, and tenders being invited for widening and protecting the other. At their meeting on the 1st of February the general-purposes committee accepted Mr. Putland's tender for the work which acceptance was afterwards duly confirmed.
Not so expeditious were the Commissioners of Filsham Level in repairing the bridge for which default the St. Leonards Commissioners had threatened them with an indictment. Mr. Bellingham, of Battle, who had been written to on the matter, did not deign to reply, and it was imagined that the presentment at the Quarter Sessions was made as a counter move against the St. Leonards Commissioners. The latter, it was quite certain, had no money to spend in litigation, for their clerk was still unsuccessful in obtaining the £900 loan which had been so repeatedly advertised for, whilst the outlays became more and more necessitous on account of the frequent visits of burly Neptune.
Encroachment on Neptune's Domains - St. Leonards Trade going to Hastings
Impelled by a fierce gale on the 15th of January, and again on the 23rd of August, the sea made some ugly breaches in the parade wall, and thus added to the many items of trouble and expense which it had similarly inflicted. The first breach was opposite to the seven houses above referred to, westward of the church, to remedy which, Mr. Carey was employed to put down a raddle fence, with oak piles, 4 or 5 feet in -
