But what was to be done? The district was equally outside of the jurisdiction of the St. Leonards Commissioners and the Hastings authorities, whilst the Trustees of the Eversfield Estate refused to do anything without an Act of Parliament, and such provision the inhabitants of St. Mary Magdalen stoutly rejected. The houses on the road were still few and far between, and Mr. Troup was labouring in every possible way to obtain for that district the appellation of "West Hastings" which the other inhabitants, by their conveyance-deeds, visiting-cards, commercial circulars, invoice-heardings, postal communications, and other necessities, had already for about five years, decided to be St. Leonards. Mr. Troup - a gentleman of indomitable self-will, many good intentions, and as many objectionable mannerisms - declared that he would make it "Hastings" before he had done; and, as a means to this end, he memoralised (sic) the Postmaster-General for letters addressed to persons between the Archway and the White Rock to be delivered from Hastings instead of St. Leonards. As I was in the Post-office at the time, his communication passed through my hands; but mark the result! Instead of the morning letters being delivered at 7.30 as they had hitherto been, they were withheld until 1.30, after the East-Coast mail arrived. Thus again Mr. Troup was foiled, and the inhabitants were inconvenienced. The letters for the Queen Dowager and her suite were, of course, an exception: but it was not to be supposed that a number of persons were to be inconvenienced merely to suit the crotchets of one man, and so another change was soon effected, which left Mr. Troup with no other alternative than to send or go from St. Leonards to Hastings twice-a-day for his own letters. He did this with the utmost ill-grace; but whilst he evidently winced under defeat, he frequently put on an ironical smile, or uttered a dogmatic assurance that he would ultimately carry his point. His vaticination, however, was never realised, although for the moment it received a shade of support from the incidental publishing of a view by Mr. Ross, of Castle street. This gentleman had taken a sketch of Seymour place - henceforth to be called Grand parade - with the residence of the Queen. To the lithographed copies of this view was attached the word Hastings; but a similar view of "Grand parade, St. Leonards," quickly made its appearance from Mr. Southall's Victoria Library, and Mr. Troup appears as little likely to achieve his object as before.
But the jealousy of the rival towns continued to exhibit itself in more ways than one; and, according to some people's views, to the detriment of both. The new roads out of St. Leonards - the only direction in which the distance to neighbouring towns and villages, and even to London, could be shortened - were retarded for the want of that united support which it was opined should be forthcoming, and a writer in the Brighton Guardian of December 27th, referring to this supineness in connection with the St. Leonards and Sedlescombe road, thus moralises:
It must be a valuable acquirement (sic) to Hastings and St. Leonards, but the people in the old town have acted as if it would injure them. How strange! The heavy hill leading out of Hastings is a crying grievance, yet the Hastings people would prefer to continue their steep and circuitous route, distressing as it is to the cattle on the road. The new road which is to be opened next year, coming as it does to St. Leonards, and also nearer to Hastings, leads the traveller through a most beautiful and hitherto almost unknown part of the country, abounding in scenery of the most picturesque description. It will afford a sheltered and beautiful drive for visitors and an ample opportunity of recreation for pedestrians. Yet the inhabitants, eager as they may be to secure permanent residents, are apparently as indifferent about the new roads as if they were being formed in Van Dieman's Land. What will induce royalty to repeat its visits to this place if proper care be not taken to make its convenience a first consideration? It is really to be hoped that the inhabitants, though late, will open their eyes to their own interests by liberally supporting improvements which are necessary to the prosperity and even existence of the towns as places of fashionable resort. The mail-coach line is shortened from 2 1/2 to 3 miles on its route to London, and its entry into the country from the north of the Harrow archway is unrivalled in its delightful landscape.
But whatever may have been the apathy of the local capitalists and tradespeople, the road was making progress of some sort, even though its pace was a slow one, and its subsequent difficulties unperceived. There was a Trustees' meeting of the St. Leonards and Sedlescombe road at the Harrow Inn sometime in December, which was presided over by Sir Charles Lamb, and at which the surveyor reported that the whole of the road from St. Leonards to the intended Archway under the old London road from Hastings was formed, and would be opened to the public in the spring; also that the line northward of such archway to a point near Sedlescombe, where the road formed two branches (one to join the direct London road, and the other leading directly into Kent) was progressing, and would be opened in the ensuing summer. Even before that meeting so much of the road was available as to permit the removal of the toll-gate just above the North Lodge, and the last toll on Mr. Burton's road was therefore taken on saturday the 22nd of July, 1837. Against the Surveyor's statement, however, that the entire route would be opened to the public in the following summer, anyone gifted with prevision might have placed a reasonable query. But more of this anon. Meanwhile it may be interposed that, howsoever much the charge of apathy in the matter of improvements might have been justified as against the inhabitants at that period, such a display of indifference can hardly be charged to the faults of a later generation. True, there is an occasional growl, that the public purse is not sufficiently open to public requirements, but any person who has been absent from the locality even half the number of years embraced by the interval, must be astonished at the vast improvements, the great extensions and the multiplicity of facilities which have been accomplished by the energy and capital of the inhabitants. And then, in mere justice to those who have gone before us, it should not be forgotten that their resources, as a whole, were more limited, whilst their views of public requirements were sometimes focalised on other great projects. One of these was the proposed harbour for Hastings, a project which has already been touched upon when describing a similar but smaller scheme for St. Leonards. A meeting was held on the 22nd of August by the promoters of the Hastings harbour, and at that meeting also were Messrs. Planta, North, Hannay, Shadwell and Rankin, who, as members of the old Corporation party, were regarded by the promoters of the harbour as opponents of the same, and as a general drag to the wheels of progress. I have felt it my duty more than once to soften the asperities of such a sweeping accusation, and I still feel that at least, St. Leonards, and, perhaps, Hastings, is better without a harbour than with it. Anyhow, it was shown by some of the gentlemen named that notwithstanding that more than 1700 vessels had been wrecked round the coast during the two years 1833-'35, it had been proved before a select committee of the House of Commons that the commanders of vessels, owing to the exaction of harbour dues, were deterred from making use of harbours of refuge except as quite a last chance of safety. Mr. Planta also remarked that he was just then unfortunately not in a position to exercise an influence with the Government, and was therefore unable to do what his colleague perhaps might do. The harbour was, however, strongly advocated by some of the speakers, who pointed out that there was no good harbour between Ramsgate and Portsmouth, a distance of 150 miles. It was ultimately resolved to proceed with the project, and to accomplish it by means of a joint-stock company. Farther on it will be seen how the project fared.
I close my preview of 1837 as pertaining to St. Leonards, with a melancholy event by which a servant of Lady Lubbock met a fatality. The venerable Dowager was invariably kind and generous to all her servants, but had to grieve at the misfortune that befell two of them. In 1834 her coachman committed suicide, through no conceivable cause, and in February of the present year, a female servant fell, by accident or design in a well and was drowned. While in her ladyship's service, Mary Ann Lucas lost her reason through, as was supposed, a love affair, and was placed at the expense of the Dowager with a person named Hyland at Westfield. Notwithstanding that the poor girl was well cared for she was found drowned in a well, and was buried at Westfield on the 28th of February. About 57 years lager, I was able to trace the whereabouts and to obtain a certificate of her burial for her relatives after they had unsuccessfully searched for it at St. Leonards, Hastings, Bexhill, Hollington and other places.
Deaths and Biographic Sketch of Mr. Stephen Putland
Interpolatory Notes
If in these historic and biographic sketchs there are occasionally some abrupt transitions from grave to gay and from mirth to sadness, it is less the result of design than of fortuitous circumstances, which sympathetically impel me to "rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep." A considerable number of persons who lived in the pre-St. Leonards epoch have made their exit from this mundane stage since I began my story, and these events have given rise to a series of mournful episodes in the general narrative. But of all those departed spirits there was not one more closely identified with the history of St. Leonards as a whole than his whose earthly tabernacle found a resting place in the Borough Cemetery on the 22nd of February, 1880, when -
