Tag Archives: Past Events

Chapmans’ Dairy Talk 4pm Sunday 28 April Royal Victoria Hotel

This talk will be given by our Chair, Stephen van Dulken, but mainly based on research by Christopher Maxwell-Stewart. The dairy was a family business which migrated from Hastings to the corner of Gensing Road and North Street and involved reconstructing two houses from the America Ground. The talk will include some very rarely seen […]

A walk for Hastings & East Sussex Natural History Society through Burtons’ St Leonards & beyond

“Walking is how the body measures itself against the earth”, a quote from Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Wanderlust: a history of walking’. Usually in a catchment area of 30 miles, the Society walks through sunshine and mud amongst their local flora & fauna and it was my turn to contribute a walk on 25th January, 2024. Managing […]

James Haliburton – Zealous investigator in Egypt of its Geology and Antiquities

Illustrated Talk by Stephen Gray: Sunday 27th March 20224 p.m. Burton Room, Royal Victoria Hotel Admission: Non-members £5.00 – Members £2.50 Of the twelve children of James and Elizabeth Burton, ten survived infancy: William Ford, Eliza, James, Jane, Septimus, Octavia, Henry, Decimus, Alfred, Jessy (Jessica) – a remarkable family. One of the most remarkable is […]

Vandeleur Benjamin Crake & Family

Their cultural & architectural contributions to St Leonards & Hastings Talk by Christopher Maxwell-Stewart Vandeleur Benjamin Crake (1816 – 1894) was the foremost member of the Crake family who made major contributions to the architectural and cultural heritage of St Leonards in the later decades of the 19th Century. The Scottish baronial ‘Highlands Gardens’ are […]

Death at Caterina Villa. The First Murder in Burtons’ St Leonards, 1848

Sunday 23rd February : Talk by Helena Wojtczak Helena Wojtczak is a local author and historian specialising in the lives of women in the Victorian era. She has written four books about the subject and one on the history of female railway workers. After discovering that a serial poisoner and Jack the Ripper suspect once […]

How to build a Georgian house

A talk by Steven Gray Sunday 27th October 2019 – 4 pm Royal Victoria Hotel, St Leonards From the aftermath of the Great Fire of London and into the Victorian era, one house type was ubiquitous from London to Bath, Liverpool to Dublin and Boston to St Leonard’s-on-Sea. Danish architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen described the […]