St Leonards Church Up For Sale
The abandoned Grade II listed church on St Leonards seafront is being marketed for outright sale by Hastings agents Dyer & Hobbis. Offers “in the region of £500,000” are advised.
It’s a building that dates only from the 1950s, designed by renowned architect Adrian Gilbert Scott after an original Burton St Leonards church there was destroyed by a V1 bomb in 1944. Current use class is F1, which covers, as well as places of worship, libraries, museums, and education and training centres. Recent proposals for alternative uses have included the establishment of a local museum, Science-on-Sea, as a satellite of London’s Science Museum; a wedding/music venue combined with a housing development and boutique hotel; or a base for social housing.
But the risks to any substantial redevelopment of the site of potential landslides from the cliffs above will daunt most viewers. It has not been used for worship since 2018 following identification of structural issues. And a major landslip took place only a few hundred yards to the west earlier this year after weeks of wet weather.
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Sadly, I cannot see any organisation, person or developer being wiling to assume responsibility for this listed building whilst the cliffs remain so unstable. The last period of excessive rain caused another landslip to the east of the church from the burial ground below the Burton tomb. Matters are not helped by having three other bodies responsible for the land around the church – ESCC, HBC and, I believe, the Land Registry. It will require considerable efforts and communication to save the building and repurpose its use for the community.