Category Archives: Blog

The early history of Albany Road, St Leonards on Sea

On the 2 July 1880, Hastings Council planning application DH/C/6/1/2509 was approved for what the Discovery catalogue describes as a ‘new road from Pevensey Road West to the borough boundary, on the Eversfield Estate, Rosamond Road’. It was later renamed Albany Road. This is an L-shaped road, with the long arm gently rising north from […]

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 […]