George Woods – Seaside Hastings in the 1890s
A display of fascinating photos taken in Hastings in the 1890s has gone on display in the Fishermen’s Museum in Rock-a-Nore Road, shares STEVE PEAK, local historian and museum trustee. They were all taken by one man, George Woods, between about 1891 and 1897, and give an intriguing glimpse into what life was like in the town just before the prosperous resort was hit by a major recession in the Edwardian era
Woods’ photos are images of Victorian people at work and play: the crowded, varied life of a major seaside resort, fishermen struggling to make a living in small sailing boats, and the slow, traditional way of life in the country just before the internal combustion engine changed the face of rural England forever.
He is known to have taken about 2,500 pictures of Hastings, St Leonards and the surrounding countryside by capturing the images on glass plates. Photography with plate glass cameras was hard physical work, as each negative required its own sheet of glass, while the camera itself was substantially built, usually of wood. Some of his seafront pictures show photographers using this type of camera.
George, his wife Mary and their daughter Margaret probably came to live in Hastings, in Mount Pleasant Road, because Mary was in poor health, and the seaside was then believed to have special curative powers for invalids. But Mary had an operation for breast cancer in 1893 and died in 1896.
In 1902 he married a well-off local woman, Ethel Rant, and their housekeeper, Helen Collins, later recalled him as being rather cantankerous; a perfectionist who wanted everything to be just so, but who was also very kind. He was quite tall, with a beard, and was quite sprightly when he was young. He loved talking to people and cycling, and collected books, butterflies and medals. George died at Priory Avenue on 4 April 1934, aged 81.
Although George Woods was such a prolific photographer, his work has not been widely known. This is because he seems to have made no attempt to publish or exhibit his pictures during his lifetime, while after his death in 1934 his negatives and prints were simply preserved by his widow, Ethel. She died aged 90 in a Hastings rest home in 1962. George also worked alone, taking photographs out of an intense personal interest in his subjects, and apparently without joining any photographic societies that would have brought his work before a wider audience.
Hastings had been one of Britain’s leading resorts for many decades, but just at the time George was taking his pictures it was at a crossroads in its history. Until the 1880s, the town had attracted many wealthier visitors, including the ‘carriage folk’ who came with their own horses and carriages to stay for months. A big attraction was Hastings Pier, which opened in 1872 and was an immediate success, so in the late 1880s a rival pier was built at St Leonards, almost opposite the Royal Victoria hotel (now all gone). In the 1890s, however, the better-off people were deserting Hastings for fashionable continental holidays, or newer resorts like Eastbourne and Bexhill.
When the wealthy failed to return to Hastings, the town lost its sense of direction as a resort and entered a major decline, captured by Robert Tressell in the early 1900s in his book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. By chance, George was taking his photographs of Hastings beach in the early and mid-1890s, just before the new byelaws began to be effective in ‘quietening down’ the seafront. His pictures therefore provide an invaluable record of Victorian seaside life at its liveliest and most fascinating.
The exhibition is open now and will be on display for several months in the Fishermen’s Museum, which is open every day from 11:00am–4:00pm. Admission is free (but donations are most welcome). Copies of many of the pictures are for sale. Many of George’s pictures can be seen on Steve Peak’s website hastingshistory.net/images-alias
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply