Old Hastings Preservation Society Newsletter Spring 2010

	Old Hastings Preservation Society Registered Charity Number 221623 Company Registration 611762 Newsletter February 2010
Hastings History House, 21 Courthouse Street, Hastings, East Sussex. TN34 3AU Tel: 01424 424744
Many of you will have heard that our Vice Chairman Dennis Collins suffered a slight stroke in November. I am pleased to say that Dennis is making a steady recovery. We wish him well and greatly appreciate the time and effort he put into the History House and spreading the work of the Society. Dennis’ marvellous memory is much missed at the coal face but we do pop in and pick his brains and hope he will be back at 21 to check up on things at some point during 2010.
Picture thanks to Kay Gobbett	Our 2009/2010 series of talks got off to an excellent start with the entertaining group seen on the right who shared their memories with us in September. The candle lit tour of 135 All Saints Street was a unique event in November and we are very grateful to Alastair Hendy for allowing us to scramble all round his lovely house.
Keith Leech’s talk on Bonfire Celebrations and Edward Preston’s Entertainment in Hastings were much enjoyed by those present and completed the 2009 part of the programme. Hastings Week was well and truly celebrated and the publication of Leonard Scrivens and Cynthia Wright’s “Hurrah for Hastings” was the icing on the cake. We are very grateful to Cynthia for her generosity in giving us 100 copies to sell and also the royalties from the publication. The need for a lift is now becoming urgent and will be our fundraising priority for 2010. The first of our talks for 2010 had to be cancelled due to the weather but we hope to see many of you at :- 6th February “Workings of a Harbour Master in a Small Port” by Captain Carl Bagwell MBE, Harbourmaster Port of Rye. Brave the winter weather to hear this interesting and excellent speaker 6th March “Westward Ho! - the migration westwards from the Old Town in the 19th century” by Christopher Langdon, Senior Partner at Young, Coles & Langdon, one of Old Town firms making this move. Both at 5.30pm at Hastings History House, Tickets £2 including light refreshments. We hope to have Dennis Collins talk on “The Croft: Regency Seaside Architecture " at some future date. Thanks to Judie Wycherley for organising an excellent lecture series.
Book Sales 2010 We are grateful for your support for our book sales and are please to take donations of good quality books for our next sale which is on Saturday 27th February from 11 -4. No Reader’s Digest volumes, Encylopedias or videos please. Books may be dropped off at the History House any time we are open. If you would like us to collect them please phone Ian on 812662 or Anne 427718. The following book sale is on 5th June.		Visit to Whitehall, a historic house dating from 1500, set in the conservation area of Cheam Village and Hatchlands Park, built in 1750’s for Admiral Boscowen on Saturday 8th May. Please see attached booking form for details of these interesting places. Thanks to Jill Bradley for organising this.

Steve Peak writes - Unique Hastings History Website A unique and popular website, recording much of the history of Hastings and St Leonards, has been redesigned and relaunched. The main feature of the site - www.hastingschronicle.com - is a detailed chronology of all the key events in the town’s history, starting before there was even a town! Anyone researching the times past of the borough will find this an invaluable source of information. I set up the site in trial form two years ago, now, with the help of friend and local web mechanic Andrew Walker, the Hastings Chronicle has been made bigger, better and easier to use, with much previously unpublished information. This includes a detailed history of Hastings Country Park. Another major feature of the Hastings Chronicle is a complete rewrite of my history of the Hastings Coastguard and Smugglers, revealing much hitherto hard-to-find information. There is also film footage of the town centre two decades ago, in the summer of 1989, as a record of the street layout, buildings and cricket ground, just before work began on the new street layout for the Priory Meadow Shopping Centre. We may have acquired a good shopping centre, but we have lost a beautiful cricket ground and open space in the middle of Hastings. This is an hour-long film, never shown anywhere before, which may make people feel very nostalgic about the town centre just 21 years ago. The site is an ongoing project and will reflect my research and historical discoveries as and when they happen. We welcome contributions from everyone and anyone interested in the history of Hastings and St Leonards. Contact can be made via the website: www.hastingschronicle.com.
Volunteers – and opportunities for volunteering As you know the OHPS and the History House are dependant on volunteers to run the society and the History House, we are fortunate to have a small but dedicated staff team at the Fishermen’s Museum. We are grateful to those who give of their time to help. East Sussex Museums and Archaeology Project have a scheme for helping volunteers to improve their skills and find employment in the Heritage sector if that is what they are looking for. There is a meeting at the History House on 11th February 6-7pm for anyone interested in finding out more about this project – do come along and see what it is about. We are always pleased to have new volunteers and need help with research and exhibitions. We hope to have regular meetings to discuss progress and to work on exhibitions and query research and if you think you can help with this please come along. The first one of these will be on 25th February at 3pm at the History House. If you can’t make the meeting but are interested to help let us know, we need to arrange regular working sessions to suit most people so need to know your usual availability. We also welcome your help with the opening of the History House do call in or ring Jill 721642. We estimate that currently we have c200 volunteer hours a week given to the History House and the Fishermen’s Museum, in applying for funds that is a major contribution. Thank you.
Pieces of History - paving slabs Many of you will have noticed our Elliott’s Patent Paving Slabs at the History House. Indeed the floor is a gem and next to the displays and the welcoming volunteers one of the best things at 21 Courthouse Street. Like most people with an interest in Archaeology I tend to keep my eyes to the ground and have found these slabs in Church Square, Rye and more recently at St Mary-in-the-Castle. The Rye examples are pink, the logo’s varied. David Padgham lent us a postcard which shows the firm was still going strong in Queens Road in 1908. The 1885/6 directory in addition gives a workshop at 4 Waterworks Road next to Peter West’s steam flour mills at no 3. Interestingly Waterworks Road has the same numbers left and right at that date, although the right-hand side from Queens Road is numbered as Alfred Terrace. I say from Queens Road although that entry in the directory refers to it as St Andrews Rd, it must have recently changed as the main entry is for Queens Road. The OHPS made a major purchase last year of local street directories, a great aid to 20th century research.
One of the slabs in the portico of St Mary-in-the-Castle.
Membership –you will have found a renewal notice in your mail out unless you pay by standing order. If you would like a standing order form please let us know. We hope you will renew your membership and appreciate your support. We have kept our membership rates unchanged for many years but would welcome more members so please encourage your friends to come along and join the Society.
Research Queries at the History House We have had some 60 enquiries so far this year, some in person and many by email. They are very varied from buildings, family history to people who are part of the national scene. Our method is generally to start with the resource material we have – our database, maps, directories and printed sources. We may trawl the net and having a computer on the desk means we are able to help people do this if they are not familiar with search engines and sites. We are developing a list of useful websites for historical research which was got off to a fine start by a lecture at last year’s family history fair in Hastings Week. The great danger is getting side tracked into interesting byways the great advantage is that there is often a synchronicity in what one finds. We log the results so that if the same enquiry comes up we can use previous work. The advantages of having partners in the project are immense and we are very grateful to David Padgham and Brian Lawes and members of HAARG and the HLHG for sharing their knowledge and expertise. We are also pleased to be able to refer people to the Family History Research room in Ore Centre it is such an asset when such groups have a base for contact. We are also pointing out what researches can get from the Museum local history room and archive collection and the reference library. I think we have proved the value of the History House and the challenge is to now seek some funding for project work and of course our lift. A sample of enquiries answered or currently being researched:-
May Yohe – a query from USA thinking she may have bought property in Hastings. This was most interesting as May Yohe [who all I asked had never heard of but of course we could google her] was an American singer whose heyday in the late 19th early 20th century and what a heyday it was. Many marriages and involvement with the Hope diamond. Brian Lawes came up with the probable answer having googled further that I did – she lived in Hastings on Hudson, USA not Hastings UK.
Ashbrook Park, Upper Church Road – a house, with a coach house and window etched “GAP 1886 Nov 11”. A possible connection with a Lord Mayor of London who may have built it for his daughters. I have not got very far with Directories and can’t find a Lord Mayor of London with those initials; the only one ending in P was a Benjamin Phillips. However the one Hastings Lord Mayor was Thomas Farncomb too early for this building although in the 1885-6 directory one Edward Farncomb lived in Ashbrook Park – could this be what the querant was thinking of? I will be passing this on to the Hastings Local History Group and David as I know they have experts in the Hollington area.
St Mary-in-the Castle School – George Winchcombe [name on a presentation watch dated 1937]. This was a puzzle as George Winchcombe seemed to have a fish shop, what was his connection with the school? First World War Memorial – project at William Parker School, we have offered to help. St Mary-in-the-Castle – project with young people on the history of the buildings and period, we hope to be able to help.
Future Exhibitions Dennis would like us to enlarge the Bourne Clearance display and as a result of an enquiry about John Street and a gift of pictures found on a skip, [how is that for synchronicity] we have come up with ” Lost Roads of Hastings and St Leonards” as our next new exhibition which we will be working on over the summer. We hope to cover John Street, Church Street, Ore and John Hodges has ideas for Silverhill and Halton. We can of course find any number of lost passages in the Old Town so like the History from Postcards it may run and run. If you are interested in helping with this please come along on 25th Feb at 3pm or let us know if that date time is not convenient.

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