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Occupants of the Charity land - Reminiscences & reviews - re the White Rock

I have said that Jeremiah Whyborn died before his lease of the Magdalen Charity-land had expired, and it may be added that Thomas Whyborn became the tenant of Hole Farm, vacated by Mr. Benjamin Lingham, in whose capacious chimney-corner, previously to 1826, I had many a time supped on home-made bread, and creamy milk. From an occupancy of the Chapel-farm or Poor-land, in St. Mary Magdalen, of which a Joseph Lingham was the lessee some 60 or 70 years previously, Mr. Whyborn succeeded to the Hole Farm, in St. Mary-in-the-Castle, which a Benjamin Lingham had previously quitted. I am reminded by these associations that whilst the Charity-land was let to Joseph Lingham in 1762 at only £18 per year, the Whyborns, in 1815, paid £65. The intermediate tenants, Mr. Thos. Deudney and his son Charles, paid respectively, £18 and £37. The elder rented it from 1769 to 1789, and the younger from 1790 to 1814. In 1838, however, after Messrs. Ransom & Co. had farmed the same land for ten years, one finds the rental increased to £110. But what is the amount realized by the Charity Commissioners, now that valuable property is being erected upon the land, and the proceeds, or a portion thereof, are applied, with other local charities, to the building and maintenance of a Grammar school and its scholarships ?

I was not one of those who, some years ago, claimed a share of the Magdalen Charity for other parishes than the two for which the Charity was originally and specifically intended, but I, nevertheless, opine that it is an injustice for those other parishes to be called upon through the medium of the School Board to contribute to the excessive price paid for a site on the Charity-land whereon has been erected a new Board school whilst the enrichment of the Charity fund by such purchase is for the exclusive benefit of what are called the two older parishes.

I mentioned that the two houses originally built by the Whyborns near the present Convent grounds were also in close proximity to the site of the old house which Mr. Thomas Deudney first inhabited when he came from Horsham in 1750; and it only remains for me to add that the said house was taken down in 1759, and that the site of the same is now occupied by No. 16 Oxford terrace, the uppermost house in Magdalen road.

Having already described at some length the somewhat important connection of the Whyborn family with the Magdalen Charity lands from the conclusion of the Peninsular war in 1814 to the commencement of St. Leonards town in 1828; and some of my readers having subsequently expressed satisfaction that the associations had enabled me to carry their minds back to a few scenes and events of pre-historic St. Leonards, it occurs to me that a little additional gossip upon the place, period and persons thus treated of may not be altogether unacceptable. I shall, for the present, confine my remarks to the parish of St. Mary Magdalen; not only on account of its embracing the larger portion of St. Leonards town, but also because, of the two parishes it is one of which my earliest reminiscences are the most vivid. It has been truly remarked in the columns of the St. Leonards Gazette that "In bygone days, when the parish of St. Mary Magdalen — which now contains many thousands of inhabitants and forms the greater part of the town of St. Leonards — was possessed of only two or three land-tenants or Principal Inhabitants, the collection of rates and the provisions for the poor were very different to the present arrangements for similar purposes. There was no need then for stipendiary collectors of rates and distributors of relief, although it must be supposed that both the time and the pockets of the two or three ‘Principal Inhabitants’ were rather heavily drawn upon in providing for the sick and the aged, as well as for the casual relief of strangers." During the 14 years occupation of the Poor-land by the Whyborns, and for 24 previous years, Mr. Charles Deudney, of Gensing-farm and the Newgates, was the leading overseer of the parish, his coadjutors being Mr. John Vincett, of Bohemia Farm, from 1814 to '16; Mr. Jeremiah Whyborn, of the Poor-land, from 1817 to ’19; and Mr. Anthony Crisp, of Bohemia, from 1820 to’23. During that period, as well as throughout the 27 years overseership of Mr. Charles Deudney’s father — altogether an epoch of 65 years — the poor-rates were levied by the overseers on the authority of a Town-clerk’s warrant, without the sanction and signatures of magistrates as is now the custom, and with no further formality than that of writing in the parish account-book something like the following extract:—

April 18th. 1814. Charles Deudney and John Vincett, overseers of the poor of the parish of St. Mary Magdalen have agreed to make a book of seven shillings and three pence in the pound, to defray the maintenance of the poor last year.

Then follows a list of the five persons only who at that time were rated to the parish, together with the several amounts of assessment :—

Chas. Deudney, Gensing Land	38	1	8
do. for the Newgates	1	12	7½
Jeremiah Whyborn, Poor Land	13	8	3
John Vincett, Bohemia land	23	11	3
Wm. Eversfield, Esq , Wood land	5	8	9
	82	2	13

Rejoicing as Britannia has had cause these many years to do over the blessings of free-trade, when she looks back to the taxation - fetters of the yeoman during the early part of the century she can hardly wish to exchange places with him in the "good old days of Protection." But, as before explained, the so-called poor-rate really included several other taxes, such as the county- rate and the Dover-castle (prison) rate, as well as the occasional disbursements for repair of roads. I should also add that although the cost of maintaining the poor was usually a heavy item in the parish accounts, such maintenance was mainly for those who as farm-labourers or lime-burners had grown old in the service of the landowners, or for such members of their families as by injuries or other misfortunes were unable to earn the means of living. Several of these were personally known to me; and if I venture to write anything concerning them it will be more in fulfilment of my promise to make these historical sketches also anecdotal, than because such personal allusions possess in themselves any special feature of interest. The first I shall refer to was an old lady whose name might have been Waters, for aught I know to the contrary, but who was best known to me under the appellation of “Old Sarah.” She was called Old Sarah when she lodged at my grandmother's in the days when "George the Third was King," and to suit my purpose she shall be called Old Sarah still. It was with Old Sarah and another person that I, when quite a child, went to see the antics of the "Mountebanks" (an open circus) on the Priory Ground, where the so-called America was afterwards built, and upon whose ruins there rose at a later period the present Robertson street. The same elderly dame, in the year 1821, led me by the hand to the top of the White-rock hill, for the purpose of seeing, according to report, the first steam-ship that had ever passed Hastings. We took up our station by the isolated but pleasantly situated house which occupied a site not far from the present White-rock villa, but upon more elevated ground, I have already referred to this habitation as the one to which I assisted in conveying a young woman who had fallen over a cutting in the cliff, but it will bear another reference as the only house which dominated the road over the old White Rock and commanded an uninterrupted view of the Channel from a point southward of Dungeness to Beachy Head. From its windows could be seen the battery of three guns upon the White-rock promontory (where the Pier now is) which had formed part of the 112 guns of Le Sans Pareil, captured from the French, by Lord Howe, on the "glorious first of June."

I remember, however, seeing but one of these guns in 1822, near to which was the track traversed by a solitary man-o’-war’s-man, who there kept watch by day and night upon the doings of the "fair traders." The White-rock house, if it had had the faculty of speech could have told many a tale of a tub; for, unless I am greatly mis-informed, it had been more than once used as a beacon by the crew in charge of a cargo of contraband. I am not sure that both it and the pit lime-kilns near it had not in their time been convenient depositories of a successful "run," but I am more conversant with the fact that the spot once known as Shepherd’s Hole — a little to the west of them and slightly rearward of the present houses 32 to 34 Eversfield place — was once the hiding-place of a smuggled cargo of brandy, from which the spirituous tubs were spirited away under cover of a layer of boulders, which at that time were used for paving the streets of the old town. But I am getting away from my cicerone! Well, we saw not the promised steamship in consequence of its non-arrival so soon as was expected. It was named George IV., and it passed Hastings at a slow rate on 2Ist of August, 1821. The townspeople were again gratified by a sight of the Royal George on the 10th of June, 1823. It was a vessel of 300 tons, and as it only travelled at the rate of seven miles an hour, many persons in ordinary boats were able to get a near view of it.

Other objects from the White Rock - The Magdalen parish paupers

As before remarked, we saw not the vessel on its first trip when we ascended to the solitary cottage on the White-rock eminence, but we saw the two Rope-walks, some 800 feet in length, which about thirty wears later were to be occupied by Carlisle parade and Robertson terrace. We also saw the blockmaker’s shop and the smithy, in one of which my grandfather had previously toiled, whilst in the other there still laboured the father of Mr. Edward Bowmer and his brothers. But we did not of course behold the 14-gun brig and the 20-gun sloop-of-war which I used to hear spoken of as having been constructed several years earlier on a spot near to where is now the Queen's Hotel. Nor could we see from where we then sat the 18 houses in York buildings, nor the 8 or 9 houses forming Meadow cottages; our view in that direction being intercepted by Cuckoo Hill, which at that time had not been lowered for the foundations of Prospect place and-