A Town Explores a Book
GAIL BORROW
The A Town Explores a Book festival (ATEAB) will connect people to the heritage of the Cretaceous period when the place was a riverbed rather than a coastal area, and where herds of Iguanodon munched on horsetails and ferns. Enthusiast Ken Brooks calls St Leonards and Hastings ‘Iguanodon metropolis’.
On a cold Autumn morning in 2024, Professor Susannah Maidment led selected Festival team members through a door marked ‘staff only’ at London’s Natural History Museum and through a warren of narrow corridors that form a private part of the building. Drawers upon drawers were then opened, to reveal hundreds of fossils found in St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings. Iguanodon fossils, labelled Hollington, St Leonards, Hastings, West Marina, Old Road Quarry, Little Ridge Quarry …
The A Town Explores A Book festival 2025 have named Gideon Mantell’s scientific paper, classifying the Iguanodon species, as their book for this year. It is the bicentenary of the presentation of his paper at the Royal Society, which was a major scientific breakthrough.
ATEAB festival groups in St Leonards have also been exploring the scientific paper illustrated by Mantell’s wife Mary Ann, who is credited with finding, in Cuckfield, the fossilised teeth that catalysed her husband’s discovery. Community group Four Courts Connect have been keen to highlight this herstory, and also to democratise the narrative by crediting the overlooked finders: the workforces of local brickworks and quarries. With them, palaeontologists forged personal relationships, so that they would be favoured over other fossil collectors to buy iguanodon fossils.
Money changed hands when the fossils were found. Further money changed hands when amateur and professional collectors identified them and sold them on to what is now the Natural History Museum. The story illustrates how Hastings and St Leonards lost a sizeable collection that might otherwise have populated a local specialist fossil museum.
ExploreTheArch’s early career artist team have been visiting schools throughout the spring term, working with up to 3,000 children. In a creative exploration of heritage inspired by the festival book, the children’s drawings will feature in the outdoor art trail. You can find the children’s art on the railings of Christ Church C E Primary Academy on Tower Road. Printed responses to the book by Hastings and Bexhill Mencap’s Active Arts group will feature in two promenade bench shelters. Zoom Arts artists’ mixed media group exhibition will be open at their gallery at St Leonards Warrior Square Station. Transition Town Hastings’ creative response on the station path will also highlight Iguanodon characteristics. Traders’ window displays can be enjoyed in Kings Road and the intersection with Tower Road and London Road. Lulie of Sugarpie Honeybuns café says: “Iguanodons? What a fantastic idea!”
The Festival runs 3-21 April 2025 in St Leonards-on-Sea. An Art Trail map is downloadable at atownexploresabook.com/outdoor-art-trail-2. Paper copies are also available at the opening event at Christ Church, Silchester Road, on Thursday 3 April, 6pm.
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