“A down-at-heel quality pervades”, Lord Holford, 1966.
“Blot on the town” Hastings Observer, 1976
“The most neglected street in Hastings and St Leonards”, Hastings Old Town Residents Association, 2016.
The histories of West St have never been properly recorded, people have come and gone and have been long forgotten. Few accounts exist in official archives and West Street barely gets a mention in any local interest or historical books. We are trying to piece together these lost histories, by digging into street directories and old records and by speaking to people with a connection to the street.
It has a reputation as a narrow, dark, back street; linked with crime, smuggling and deprivation. Buildings were left derelict for years. Historically it often flooded after bad storms. Recent recollections relate to drunken behaviour - violent fights, smashed windows, people snorting cocaine on wheelie bins and urinating down alleyways, plus blocked drains and rubbish routinely dumped on the street.
Residents (since the early 1800s) have included fisherfolk, coxswains, boot makers, bell hangers, tea merchants, farriers, fruiterers, costumiers, a champion swimmer, musicians, artists, a political cartoonist and the president of the British Society of Trichologists.
They have run warehouses, theatrical stores, tattoo shops and tea rooms. They have been convicted of drunk and disorderly behaviour, of assaulting their wives, desertion and bigamy and in one case, the repeated theft of bicycles. They have been awarded honours for bravery on the lifeboats, for rescuing runaway horses and drowning children and for acts of valour as voluntary firemen.
The Ancient Order of Druids held a lodge at The Hastings Arms, at the other end of the street Oswald Mosely and the Blackshirts spoke at The Norfolk Hotel. Market Hall, in the middle, hosted talks by political groups, social activists (including suffragettes) and learned societies, fancy dress balls, tea parties for pauper children, many plays, flower shows and musical entertainments. It was also a coroners court and an aquarium with an alligator and an octopus. In the 1950s people remember that monkeys were kept upstairs in cages - they were used in tourist photographs along the seafront.
Many of the houses were earmarked for demolition in the 1930s as part of the slum clearances (they escaped).
Smugglers tunnels still exist between buildings - pet cats got stuck in them as late as the 1970s.
The Queen Adelaide pub opened early in the mornings to cater for fishermen returning from sea (this was the case, unofficially, until it was shut down about eight years ago).
We have found desperate stories - of infanticide (an unmarried mother killed her newborn child and left it on West Street, wrapped in the sleeve of her black dress), people bankrupted and gaoled, removed to the workhouse or sent to asylums + tales of suicide, drownings and death in fires.
Houses were smashed and left derelict for decades following unrecorded tragic events and filled with pigeons - people recount how as children they snuck in to collect their eggs.
Other children dared each other to walk down 'Witches Alley' and hoisted string to neighbours across the road, allowing them to send messages.
People have recounted poltergeists, drunks collapsed in the drains, and an unidentified Cypriot man with one leg. People remember the antiques shop with a human foetus in the window and the garage built especially to house Lord Tiverton's Rolls Royce.
Further information and research can be found in the West Street Chronicle, published in Summer 2018 - and at a permanent archive box kept at the Hastings History House.
It has a reputation as a narrow, dark, back street; linked with crime, smuggling and deprivation. Buildings were left derelict for years. Historically it often flooded after bad storms. Recent recollections relate to drunken behaviour - violent fights, smashed windows, people snorting cocaine on wheelie bins and urinating down alleyways, plus blocked drains and rubbish routinely dumped on the street.
Residents (since the early 1800s) have included fisherfolk, coxswains, boot makers, bell hangers, tea merchants, farriers, fruiterers, costumiers, a champion swimmer, musicians, artists, a political cartoonist and the president of the British Society of Trichologists.
They have run warehouses, theatrical stores, tattoo shops and tea rooms. They have been convicted of drunk and disorderly behaviour, of assaulting their wives, desertion and bigamy and in one case, the repeated theft of bicycles. They have been awarded honours for bravery on the lifeboats, for rescuing runaway horses and drowning children and for acts of valour as voluntary firemen.
The Ancient Order of Druids held a lodge at The Hastings Arms, at the other end of the street Oswald Mosely and the Blackshirts spoke at The Norfolk Hotel. Market Hall, in the middle, hosted talks by political groups, social activists (including suffragettes) and learned societies, fancy dress balls, tea parties for pauper children, many plays, flower shows and musical entertainments. It was also a coroners court and an aquarium with an alligator and an octopus. In the 1950s people remember that monkeys were kept upstairs in cages - they were used in tourist photographs along the seafront.
Many of the houses were earmarked for demolition in the 1930s as part of the slum clearances (they escaped).
Smugglers tunnels still exist between buildings - pet cats got stuck in them as late as the 1970s.
The Queen Adelaide pub opened early in the mornings to cater for fishermen returning from sea (this was the case, unofficially, until it was shut down about eight years ago).
We have found desperate stories - of infanticide (an unmarried mother killed her newborn child and left it on West Street, wrapped in the sleeve of her black dress), people bankrupted and gaoled, removed to the workhouse or sent to asylums + tales of suicide, drownings and death in fires.
Houses were smashed and left derelict for decades following unrecorded tragic events and filled with pigeons - people recount how as children they snuck in to collect their eggs.
Other children dared each other to walk down 'Witches Alley' and hoisted string to neighbours across the road, allowing them to send messages.
People have recounted poltergeists, drunks collapsed in the drains, and an unidentified Cypriot man with one leg. People remember the antiques shop with a human foetus in the window and the garage built especially to house Lord Tiverton's Rolls Royce.
Further information and research can be found in the West Street Chronicle, published in Summer 2018 - and at a permanent archive box kept at the Hastings History House.
