Category Archives: Blog

Padgham and Hutchinson, a St Leonards on Sea building partnership

Padgham and Hutchinson were an important building partnership in St Leonards and Bexhill in the 1890s and early 1900s. A great deal of information is in the useful Discovery database that includes archives for East Sussex at The Keep, plus of course mentions in the newspapers. In Discovery, putting in say a street or an […]

The early history of Gensing Gardens

This is an account of the early history of what is now Gensing Gardens. It was called at various times the Western Pleasure Ground, Gensing Pleasure Ground, Gensing Wood Public Pleasure Ground, and perhaps other variations. This park, a combination of open land and shrubberies with some trees, slopes quite steeply from Charles Road on […]

Elvey Thomas of the St Leonards Pier and the White Hart, 54 Norman Road, St Leonards on Sea

In the 1891 census at Deptford, Kent, Elvey Thomas was a 14-year-old clerk, born New Cross, his father a railway official. The Hastings and St Leonards Advertiser, 21 April 1898, announced that he had been appointed manager of the St Leonards Pier. He was only 21 ! As on this occasion, he was consistently described […]

The history of Ford Bank, 30 Albany Road, St Leonards on Sea

I have just come back from a very pleasant garden party at Ford Bank, together with many others from the Society. Many thanks to our generous hosts ! Enough to say it is an interesting example of, in effect, a forerunner of the English arts and crafts style. Below is a photo of the south, […]

Letters on local housing, 1911-12: ‘A strong man, a Decimus Burton’, ‘How Hastings may prosper’

A letter was published in the Hastings and St Leonards Observer in its 23 December 1911 issue. It included this passage: Many more visitors come to the town now than did during what we call the palmy days, but they come at a different part of the year, and mainly do not occupy the same […]