Preparations for Robertson terrace, Robertson street & Carlisle Parade
That the near completion of the railway terminus in the Priory Meadow should be an incentive to building operations in that neighbourhood was a concomitant likely to be expected; and means were therefore employed to utilize for that purpose the Crown Lands, which, after the driving off the usurpers of “no-man’s-land”, had lain dormant for about fifteen years. On Friday, the 8th of Feb’y, the ceremony of transferring the Crown Lands from Her Majesty’s Commissioners to the lessees took place on the spot, between the representatives of each party, the one conducting the other over the ground the “walking-in” thus completing the transfer. Apropos of this simple ceremony, the Hastings and St. Leonard’s News had an article, from which the following extracts are made: —
“Many of our readers, doubtless, recollect the Desert (as it has recently been denominated) ere Neptune and the Board of Woods and Forests combined to give a stimulus to local immigration by rudely disturbing aboriginal right, and violating many a local habitation where at the period of which we write many a person might still have sung “home sweet home” while wending his way to free ‘America,’ and knew
- ‘By the smoke that so gracefully curled
- ’Bove the Rope Walk his cottage was near.’
But this antique accumulation of ill-built and undrained houses has long been removed, and we do not grieve the change. The ground has for the last few years presented a waste, a bleak and sterile wilderness — an fact which needs not our pen to awaken it in the recollection of anyone who has chanced to journey across it on a winter’s day during a gale from the north, with snow, rain or hail as an accompaniment. A scheme is now in working for covering the ground with capacious mansions and shops, which, when erected, may again become the homes of those who were driven from their ‘native land’ to wander in the strange country of Hastings and St. Leonard’s. According to the plans now lying at the office of Messrs. Reeks and Humbert, a row of good sized houses is intended for the front. This will consist of 36 houses [the number built being 31 and the Queen’s Hotel , with a frontage each of 22 ft. 6 in., and a depth of 40 feet. The centre houses [named Robertson terrace when built] will be run back in the form of a crescent, the space in front being filled up with a grass plat or ornamental ground. The line of frontage [here] will be 70 feet from the sea wall, and a carriage road will be allowed in front of the houses. No road across the ground will be left [a track only existed previously], but 10 feet in width will be given to the present road [now Robertson-Street ] leading from York Buildings to White Rock. On the south side of this road and along the whole extent will be a line of shops, and the same northward between the St. Leonards road and the one going up the hill towards Bohemia, so as to fill up the angular -
