Many members of this society enjoyed a garden party at Glanymor, 3 Highlands Gardens today. This post is about the early history of that house. The name, by the way, is Welsh for ‘seaside’. It is Grade II listed, and Historic England describes it and the neighbouring houses: HIGHLAND GARDENS 1. 5204 St Leonards Nos […]
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St Leonards used to have the Warrior Square Concert Hall, later the Royal Concert Hall. Its location was on a block that is now entirely occupied by an apartment building, with Terrace Road to its south and Warrior Gardens to its north. The Hastings and St Leonards Observer, 18 October 1879, describes in detail the […]
By chance I came across a photo of a man using old railway carriages at St Leonards as bathing machines. This was in the Sunday Mirror, 30 May 1920, with the headline ‘Demobilised Major as bathing machine proprietor’. There is a picture of the gallant Major smiling at a lady customer about to enter the […]
What is well established is who built Stanhope Place in St Leonards on Sea. What, I suspect, is not known is why the road has that name, and who actually owned the freeholds of its 14 terrace houses in its first decades. These houses are Grade II listed, and their official description at the Historic […]
I have posted before about a bombing raid on The Lawn, taken from bomb reports kept at the Hastings Museum. This post is about a raid on the 19 February 1943 which caused much damage across a large area of St Leonards. I have selected another short road affected in that raid, Cumberland Gardens, to […]
4 June 1835, Brighton Gazette HASTINGS. It is reported here that part of the Roman Catholic Establishment will consist of Sisters of Charity. WARRIOR’S GATE, BETWEEN HASTINGS AND ST LEONARDS. – The Sea Wall, partly formed of concrete and partly of stone, is now completed, and will be an object of general attention and admiration. […]
Undercliff is a road in St Leonards which at present is numbered 1 to 14, going from east to west. It used to be numbered 1 to 18, but four houses were destroyed in World War II. This post will mainly show how some information on those lost houses, and proposals to rebuild them or […]
By chance I came across, in the Hastings and St Leonards Times, 22 May 1880, two interesting reports of begging in St Leonards by men who had come a considerable distance. The details given about the prisoners are touching. HASTINGS BOROUGH BENCH. SATURDAY. Before Mr H.C. CAULFEILD and Mr Alderman WILLIAMS. BEGGING ALMS William Cooper, […]
There is a set of detailed maps of much of St Leonards and Hastings, surveyed 1873 and published 1875, on the (free) National Library of Scotland website. This post discusses the map for the West Hill Road (west half) , some of which is shown below, and there is also a map that includes the […]
The 1921 census is the most recent available in the UK for researching individual households. Normally censuses are released at 100-year intervals. As the 1931 census was destroyed by bombing, and the 1941 census was never conducted, we will have a long wait for the 1951 census. We have census data for households since 1841 […]