Christopher Maxwell-Stewart Saved St Leonards
An abridged version of BERNARD MCGINLEY’s tribute of Christopher Maxwell-Stewart in Hastings Online Times
The 1960s zeitgeist was for demolition. Old was boring. New was better. Neophiliacs were in charge. In St Leonards-on-Sea, Christopher Maxwell-Stewart, who has died aged 88, saw it differently.
London lost the Euston Arch and the Coal Exchange. St Leonards lost Quarry House, built by James Burton in 1830. Other parts of pre-Victorian St Leonards were also damaged and threatened.
The short-termism and shortsightedness of this was clear to CMS, who advocated a ‘long life, loose fit’ approach to the reuse of old buildings. As a boy he had seen the bombed ruins of St Leonard’s church on the seafront, another James Burton building.
In 1945, however, his widowed mother started a guest house at 5 The Mount, once lived in by Herbert Spencer, the Victorian social theorist who coined ‘survival of the fittest’. He was also able to attend the Uplands County Secondary Technical School nearby (also known as Archery Villas, facing the Archery Ground).
He went on to Hastings Grammar School and then to Queen Mary College, London University, on a scholarship to study civil engineering. There he became Vice-President of the Students Union. As a qualified civil engineer he worked on post-war reconstruction at London County Council. He developed his appreciation of architecture in classes at Goldsmiths College, London University.
From the LCC he joined [Ove] Arup & Partners. When the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier came to lunch, Christopher Maxwell-Stewart was constructively at the table too as a French-speaking builder.
Several times Ove Arup sent him to Nigeria to work on projects including bridges and roads and cocoa sheds. By then he was married to the highly accomplished artist Prue Theobalds and there were young children to consider. Conditions were poor and the family was sent home. CMS joined them when civil war broke out in Nigeria 1967.
Back home, the damage to St Leonards was continuing. The authorities were blasé about demolition of distinguished old buildings. Rosemount at the top of Archery Road was flattened. The Archery Ground had a College of Arts and Technology plonked on it.
Threats to the heart of St Leonards led Christopher to be part of the foundation of The Mount Preservation Society. Soon this became the Burtons’ St Leonards Society. In 1968 he created a ‘Let’s Save Burtons’ St Leonards’ Exhibition, with co-founder Cecil Bacon, the nationally known illustrator.
Publicity brought results. With a quiet but determined manner, Christopher was willing and able to enrol some big names in support of the defence of St Leonards.
The consensus grew that St Leonards-on-Sea was an unusual and exceptional place, a purpose-built resort of national importance. Christopher and supporters dealt with threats to Allegria (Quarry Hill) and Gloucester Lodge (St Leonard’s Gardens) from Hastings Borough Council. He was also involved in saving Manor House in Bexhill Old Town and found the energy and time to do an MSc at City University.
In the 2000s, CMS was involved with STAG (Save the Archery Ground). In the campaign for conservation of the Burton Tomb, he provided drawings and specifications. He was also involved in restoration work in the East Colonnade at Philpot’s department store.
Always conscious of the less fortunate, CMS worked to help the local homeless through the Snowflake Trust. He was also involved with the Emmaus charity and supported Warming Up The Homeless. He was of the firm view that he did not want thanks for what he had done. Even so, it remains incontestable that Christopher Maxwell Stewart was a major benefactor of St Leonards, its people and buildings, its past and future.
However busy he was, his knowledge of St Leonards only seemed to grow: in writing for instance on James Haliburton the Egyptologist (the son of James Burton), or in advising the Decimus Burton Society on its formation, and contributing to its journal too. He stood down as chair of the Burtons’ St Leonards Society only in 2023, for the second time. In October 2024 he attended his wife’s talk at the Royal Victoria Hotel on the wreck of the Amsterdam at Bulverhythe and seemed quite well. At the end of the month Christopher Maxwell-Stewart died unexpectedly, at home in St Leonards, in the presence of his wife and family.
For full tribute visit hastingsonlinetimes.co.uk.
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