The paper’s name declares its independence, and it sticks to its guns. As a features writer, I have never been forced to change my stance for some dark political aim – the paper aims for authenticity and freedom of intellect, and as such, it is precious to the town. I am honoured to contribute – long may it continue.

Derived from Latin, the word ‘feature’ came into English via Old French to mean ‘aspects of the face’. It was adopted by journalism in the 19th century to mean something distinctive, prominent and developed in depth.

As a features writer, I am reminded of the 1559 painting by Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder titled The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, which contrasts Carnival (indulgence, meat, drink, festivity) with Lent (restraint, fasting, repentance, preparation for Easter), a symbolic clash between two ways of living. You could liken this to the community of Hastings, living between pleasure and restraint. So too, HIP features try to excite interest by the choice of topic and accessibility, while including more sombre elements and serious intent.

At its highest level, feature journalism is not simply about reporting facts; it is about making reality intelligible, memorable and human, without sacrificing accuracy. Gay Talese (New York Times journalist and author of the famous article Frank Sinatra Has a Cold) said: “The best journalism is not writing, it is reporting.” John Hersey (war correspondent for Time and Life magazines, who wrote the remarkable feature Hiroshima 1946) counters: ‘“What people want to read is stories.” Finley Peter Dunne, the Chicago newspaper humourist, states, “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Joseph Pulitzer, who campaigned for investigative journalism, suggests: “Accuracy is not a minor virtue. It is the virtue.” To combine these luminaries: the best stories are true stories, well told.

The feature writing we all strive to achieve reads with the confidence of literature but is built on verifiable fact. It often draws on primary interviews, archival or documentary evidence and firsthand observation. There is hopefully no padding or speculation disguised as insight. A clear, compelling narrative arc is aimed for where readers are carried, not merely informed.

Unlike news reporting, feature journalism prioritises: it answers not just what happened, but why it matters. The writer’s voice is present but disciplined: the writing serves the story – not the writer’s ego. Credibility is everything.

Having set the scene in celebration of feature writing, let us look at some of the features that have appeared over the first 299 editions. In doing so, we note that titles play a huge part in attracting readers who want to satisfy their curiosity with ‘Carnival’ or ‘Lenten’ content.

Here are some examples: Alfred the Great’s Fort in Hastings – Where was It? The Death of St Leonards. What Lies Beneath: Exploring an Old Cellar; Why are you so emotional – the suppressed anger of youth; Don’t All Children’s Lives Matter? And hopefully, my article on beached submarines was not submerged: The Fatal Attraction of a Helpless Sea Monster.

Features Editor Ben Bruges (who wrote the excellent Hastings Dot Connected in 2020, Cat Behaviourist and Groomer in 2022, A Word from our Founders and Valentines Vivarium in 2023) has chosen his list of features to be celebrated:

The Death of St Leonards, by outstanding historian and Hastings Museum Trustee Steve Peak, was published on 24 September 2025, and its opening remarks make you want to read on:

“This month is the 150th anniversary of the death of the newly-born town of St Leonards. On 29 September 1875, an Act of Parliament dissolved the local authority that had been running the town since 1832, forcing its streets, buildings, and open spaces to come under the rule of Hastings Council.”

Before reading this, I always thought that the town I was living in was called Hastings & St Leonards – but no! Having been part of a battle to save a flood plain from a housing estate in St Leonards’ wonderful wildlife haven of Combe Valley, I can see why the people who live away from Hastings town centre feel they are in a hinterland. Maybe St Leonards’ independent identity is being undermined – just like Bexhill Road’s driving surface.

Peter Gray’s feature The Wreck of the Amsterdam was published on 4 June 2025 and begins with the tantalising opener:

“There is a mystery as to why the Amsterdam ended up in Pevensey Bay during a great storm, unable to get beyond Beachy Head: five other ships did get beyond and as far as Portsmouth. So, the great storm was not quite as significant as some think.”

I am following a story on the intentions of the Dutch who are still interested in lifting this treasure full of treasure and taking it back to Holland, even though it is inside the lawful park boundary. Look out for a forthcoming feature on the subject!

HIP pays close attention to the evident poverty in overpopulated Hastings, where constant demands for new housing eat up green space. Poverty problems were highlighted on 18 October 2023 by the late Sally Burr with the opening lines:

“Residents in Hastings who qualify for Pension Credit and do not claim it are missing out on an estimated three million pounds in unclaimed benefit, according to a social policy software and analytics company.”

Nothing changes. People still must sleep on the streets despite millions from government – poverty seems endemic. Using the official Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), Hastings is around the 14th most deprived local authority in England, placing it among the most deprived coastal towns in the country. Some neighbourhoods are in the top 1-3% most deprived in England. Others are mid-range or less deprived; of the 90,000 population, 63,300 people (≈73% of residents) live in the poorest 30% of areas nationally. That is a very high concentration of deprivation.

Around 1 in 64 people in Hastings are homeless (including temporary accommodation). These include families in temporary housing, hostels, insecure accommodation and rough sleeping, sofa surfing, and temporary housing. Green lungs will be eaten up by housing tyranny that people in poverty cannot afford, and their mental health will suffer even more.

In June 2020 there was a 150th edition retrospective which highlighted Black lives: “The Black Lives Matter protests have triggered a massive political movement in the USA but have also found echoes right around the world. What has it got to do with Hastings? Some white people object. To them we say, why not listen to the experience of black people who were born and live around you?” Graham Howard posted this comment on his Facebook timeline, and after it gained a lot of likes and supportive comments from his immediate friends and family, HIP thought it deserved a wider audience (see Born Black in Hastings, 16 June 2020) .

In summary, feature journalism is deeply reported, narratively structured non-fiction that combines evidential precision with human insight, producing work that is both intellectually rigorous and emotionally compelling. Features appear in most editions of HIP. The thoughts behind the features are emotionally driven to ensure that people are entertained, informed, and satisfied by them, with their Carnival cheer or Lenten drama.

Here’s to another 300 editions of our democratic and independent newspaper!

To read any article referred to in this article, use the title to search the internet or use Find what you are looking for on the HIP website 

Everyone loves a mystery, and this is a big one. Since 2022 I have been researching the controversial claims in historian B.W. Flint’s book: Edith the Fair – The Visionary of Walsingham (Gracewing, 2006). Edith the Fair (c.1025-c.1086), popularly known as Edith Swan Neck, or Edith the Graceful Swan will be celebrated in the Edith Festival, White Rock Hotel, Hastings 19 October 2024, 12.30 – 7pm. Roman Catholic historian Bill Flint’s book puts forward his personal theory that Danish woman Edith the Fair was a visionary who in 1061, was spirited to Nazareth to the site of the Annunciation, where Archangel Gabriel had revealed to Mary that God was going to make her pregnant in a sinless conception. The Walsingham visionary saw the original small wooden house that Our Lady was in and made a replica of it in Norfolk so that pilgrims did not have to travel to the Holy Land to see it. Flint therefore says that the founder of England’s greatest Marian Shrine at Walsingham in Norfolk was Earl Harold’s wife, Edith the Fair.

My research thus far does not support his theories. Every medieval historian does their best to assess often incomplete primary sources and rather than say nothing, they put forward ideas that others may test. My conclusion is that Flint has made too many errors. However, thereis another possibility that will meet the facts and reveal the planning behind the vision story.

Flint’s key aim was to show that a multi-versed poem or song by an unknown composer, known as the Pynson Ballad, was written just after 1086, the year that William the Conqueror left England only to die in Normandy a year later. The unique copy of the ballad at Cambridge University is so called because it bears the printer’s mark of Richard Pynson who was official state printer to Kings Henry VII and VIII. Pynson was born in Normandy, went to the University of Paris, came to England and was naturalised as English, took over the print works of well-known printer William de Machlinia and went into competition with another famous medieval printer, Wynkyn de Worde.

Flint, who passed away in 2014, was an honourable man. He was the Research Fellow for the Maryvale Institute (Birmingham) and the Parish Catechist at St Mary-on-Quay, Bristol. He aimed to show that much of the history concerning Edith that is advocated to us by noted English historians is wrong. His ideas have caused changes to many websites, especially Wikipedia. But is he right? For example, he states that Harold and Edith were married in an English Christian ceremony, not one involving Danish handfasting (more danico) i.e. according to Danish custom. He claims that Edith was the daughter of the notorious Jomsviking Thorkell the Tall (before 986-c.1039), whose drunken warriors chained up the Archbishop of Canterbury, dragged him around southern England, then beat him to death with a cattle bone. Extraordinarily, he claims that Edith was called ‘Rychold’, not Edith, Edeva or Edeva puella, as she is certainly known in the Domesday Book as the owner of lands in other parts of England, (Cambridgeshire for example). He claims that even though the Pynson Ballad mentions that the visionary of 1061 was a ‘widow’ in two separate verses, the ballad writer only wrote this because King Harold was killed in 1066. Most telling for me is the claim by Flint that ‘Harold’s brothers fled to Ireland’ whereas fans of the Battle of Hastings know full well that one of his brothers, Sweyn, died on the way back from Jerusalem, one, Wulfnoth, was kept as a hostage in Normandy, another, Tostig, was killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge and the others, Gyrth and Leofwine were killed by storming Norman knights while standing fast to the last with Harold around the ‘The Fighting Man Banner’ (Feohtend Mann/ Fíghtandi Maðr), at so-called Senlac, wherever that was.

Most importantly, Bill Flint claims that the Walsingham Shrine authorities, and the Professor of Medieval History at Bristol University, Dr J. C. Dickinson (1911-1984) made a huge mistake in claiming that the visionary of Walsingham was not Edith the Fair but instead was a woman called Richeldis de Favareches (the rich and fair woman of Favareches in Normandy).

Dr Henrietta Leyser, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at St Peter’s College, Oxford University, says flatly that Favareches does not appear in the Domesday Book of 1086 at all, even in the Norfolk part of it. However, she confirms that a rich landowning woman called Richeldis de Favareches does appear in the financial records of the Norfolk Pipe Roll for 1130/1, exactly one hundred years after the specified date in the Pynson Ballad.

So why does verse 1 of the Pynson Ballad say 1061 and verse 14 state that the ballad was written ‘four hundred years or more’ after the vision in 1061? Why does the ballad mention King Edward the Confessor as being alive when the vision occurred? Who wrote the Ballad that Pynson printed? Why does the author of the book, The History and Spirituality of Walsingham, Carmelite Sister Elizabeth Ruth Obbard say, when dismissing Flint’s theory – ‘Serious historians do not countenance 1061 as factual?’ Why the great difference between Flint’s view and the view of the Walsingham Shrine authorities?  Where might all the other copies of the Pynson Ballad be hiding? All will be revealed by me at the Edith Festival – so don’t delay – book today!

White Rock Hotel Hastings sea front

19th October 2024

13.00 to 14.30 – Professor Christopher Scull FSA – Rendlesham and the East Anglian Kingdom

15.00 to 16.30 – David EP Dennis AFRHS – The History of Old Winchelsea – and the Mystery of Edith the Fair and Pynson Ballad

17.00 to 18.30 – Dr James Wright FSA – Historic Building Mythbusting

Book via Eventbrite or friendsofedith.org.uk

Water outflows

In HIP 229 we published an article We Just Want to Swim in the Sea! written by David Dennis which included the following paragraph:

“Gradually, as legislation demanded improvements, water companies made some changes, but even now the situation is unsatisfactory. It is salutary to learn how the current dual purpose outflow system was forced on the people of Bexhill by uncaring officials at government and local levels.” 

An overzealous sub-editor added words to describe the dual purpose outflow system as “where drinking water and sewage water are conveyed through the same pipe”. As a reader has pointed out, this is not the case. Rather, the dual purpose is  – as David explained in the following paragraph – the linkage between the floodwater overflow system and the main sewer system.

We apologise both to David and to our readers for this error.

Northeye 

In our report Twin Demos over Northeye in HIP 231, it was stated that at the No to Northeye demonstration its chief organiser, Bexhill town councillor Nigel Jacklin, collected signatures for a petition urging the Government to consider alternative solutions. This was an error, referring wrongly to an earlier petition promoted on change.org by another opponent of the Northeye project. Mr Jacklin’s petition being signed on 22 July called for Rother District Council to oppose “Northeye Asylum Seeker Proposals”.  We apologise for confusing the two petitions.

The area of study will extend from Northeye in Pevensey Marshes to the west bank of the Combe Haven river under a three-year programme involving volunteers, young people, local residents and experts. Last week Bexhill Town Council voted funds for the project for an initial 12-month period; continuation into a second and third year will be dependent on further council votes.

In Year One (June 2023 to May 2024) there will be an initial assessment of Bexhill’s wildlife and plants, divided into four seasonal research tranches – summer, autumn, winter and spring. Councillors will receive detailed reports at the end of each season.

In Year Two (2024-2025), subject to renewed funding, public meetings will be held and a team of volunteers, especially young people, recruited to conduct street-by-street and landscape surveys looking for problems in trees, plant types, wildlife, coastal areas, streams, water courses and pollution of the environment in their own wards. Funding bids will be made, and a conservation management phase will be planned, using the Wild Domesday Survey data and volunteer local ward data as a base, to ensure relevant planting and landscaping, and additional water in the landscape for animals, insects, and tree survival in drought conditions. 

In Year Three (2025-26), subject again to renewed funding, the conservation enhancements highlighted as necessary by the evaluation data would be undertaken. This phase has aspects which could attract match funding and action from external sources such as the East Sussex County Council grants programme, the National Lottery, the Environment Agency, and some local charities supporting green issues.

Some aspects that will be at the top of the Project agenda:

• Sewage and sea/bathing water quality
• Cyanobacteria and seaborne microbacteria
• Seafront storm damage
• Flooding implications
• Summer drought – loss of plants, trees, and wildlife
• Extensive loss of protective beach shingle due to excessive longshore drift through the many damaged groins 
• Fly tipping and leachate pollution.

David Dennis says that his key concerns within the area being surveyed are –

1. to increase the summer availability of water so as to avoid cyanobacterial blooms and prevent wildlife from running out of water during drought; and
2. to address the long-term cosmetic design of Bexhill seafront, where studies will be conducted to find how to prevent wave damage if sea levels rise as predicted.

However, other key aspects will be sewage and bathing water quality, light pollution, fly-tipping, and all other matters that harm wildlife or adversely affect landscape enjoyment and conservation.

The project relies upon full co-operation with county and local councils, national organisations, and local wildlife specialist groups and trusts.

The basic price paid by Trafalgar was £75,000, but the sale was subject to an overage agreement under which 35% of any uplift in value, resulting from grant of planning consent for any non-agricultural or equestrian use for the next 30 years, will be payable to the seller.

CREDIT: David Dennis

Trafalgar does not hide its intentions. Its website boasts of a similar operation conducted at Sevenoaks where it bought a 17.7-acre site in two phases over a five-year period between 2016 and 2021. The land purchased in the initial phase (7.2 acres) “has since been sold to sophisticated investors and will be promoted through the local plan, along with the new phase, in due course”. 

David Dennis, founder of the Friends of Combe Valley, describes the area around Pebsham Lake as having “probably the greatest amount of wildlife variety in the valley” – he enumerates cormorants, spotted flycatchers, redwings, Pyrausta moths, herons, kingfishers, a range of ducks, greater crested grebes, dragonflies and damsels, and many butterflies. The 80-plus cormorant roost would be especially threatened by the close proximity of housing at the lake edge.

Bexhill town councillor Sharon Blagrove has formed a new Facebook group styled Save Our Bexhill Green Spaces. The group has gathered over 300 members in only a few days with the aim of conserving wildlife and landscape and opposing any further housing development in the area that may cause a loss of green space. What may aid them rather more conclusively than any political programme is the risk of pollution of the site from the nearby waste tip. In addition to frequent fly-tipping into the field in question, a serious leak of leachate has turned the footpath at Pebsham Lake into “a black morass” according to Mr Dennis. Might Trafalgar’s ”sophisticated investors” be concerned that this turn of events wasn’t on the prospectus?

It had been clear for months that, despite commissioning costly surveys from specialist consultants, HBC was most unlikely to be able to satisfy EA concerns about risks of flooding of the site. In its press release the council admitted that it had run out of time. “Extensive site investigation work and flood modelling showed”, it said, “that work could not progress quickly enough to meet the terms of the Homes England funding the project relied on.”

CREDIT: David Dennis

Cllr Andy Batsford, lead councillor for housing and homelessness, said: “We have a massive housing crisis in our town with not enough rented affordable homes to meet the needs of our residents. The funding offered by Homes England gave us the opportunity to explore and develop proposals to deliver a number of these much-needed homes on this site, and it would have been a dereliction of our duty as a council and to those local families, keyworkers and low paid residents desperate for a home not to have taken this opportunity.

“This funding has allowed us to model a range of different flood scenarios. Based on the latest Environment Agency advice, the modelling indicates a potential flood risk that is wider than previously understood and more work/modelling will need to be done going forward. This, combined with other site constraints, has led us to withdraw the application.”

As with the Tilekiln announcement, political opponents – who in the case of this scheme have been vociferous objectors from the start – have been quick to issue ‘I told you so’ indictments. Cllr Andy Patmore, leader of the Conservatives on the council, said: “From the very beginning residents who live nearby were against plans to build on Bulverythe Rec and thought it a non-starter. The Environment Agency categorise the Rec as a Zone 3a flood zone – which means it has a high probability of flooding. 

“This entire debacle has been a scandalous exercise in obstinacy and hubris by the Labour-led council. The site was the centrepiece of the council’s “500 affordable homes” policy. This much-lauded target has now been blown out of the water. 

“The staggering consequence of all that wasted time is that the council blew £1.9 million trying to get over the Environment Agency’s objection which said categorically the development; ‘should not be permitted’”. 

Green party leader Julia Hilton said: ”Anyone with any expertise has been telling the council since the start not to build on a flood plain. I will be asking questions at the next full council meeting on how much money and officer time
has been spent on this proposal and why the Environment Agency was not fully consulted before any plans were drawn up”.

The demise of the proposals leaves, according to HBC, more than 1,100 households currently on the council’s housing register who are hoping to be awarded social housing. In addition, there are nearly 400 households
living in temporary accommodation who are looking for suitable longer-term homes to meet their family’s needs. 

• Read more: Understanding Bulverhythe

Combe Valley is the vale of the Combe Haven River. Its southern outflow area, called Bulverhythe, is a natural winter-flooded valley with a consequent flood plain.

Twelve thousand years ago Bulverhythe was a steep-sided inlet of the sea. Six thousand years ago there was a gathering place where people would sit on the shores, south of what is now called Crowhurst, to make flint axes and arrowheads. Later, in the Iron Age, the farmers cut trees for their cooking fires and homesteads. Winter rains and gravitational soil-creep reconfigured the U-shaped valley we see today, with its wonderful winter lake full of wildlife. 

In early medieval times, Bulverhythe harbour existed under King Edward the Confessor (ruler from 1042 to 1066). In 1359, King Edward III appointed Bulverhythe as a ‘limb port’ of the Cinque Ports and ordered that “the manor of Bulverhythe shall provide one ship, this duty to be supported by the people of Pebsham” (called then Petit Ihamme or Pyppels Ham). Bulverhythe Harbour docking records show that in an assembly of those in charge of harbours for the Cinque Ports held at Bulverhythe (called then Bulverhide) on 22 September 1676, it was decreed that all “shallops and other outlandish vessels, which put into Bulverhide haven, or stretch a rope or line, and if any the maisters or men thereof doe come on shore wherever within the libertie of this towne, shall paie 12d. for everie vessell to the pierwardens.”

CREDIT: David Dennis

Annual flooding

It is likely that the harbour was still transporting cannons from Ashburnham ironworks to the continent in the 1700s. Eventually, longshore drift, hinterland farming activity and silting put paid to the harbour, but not to the annual flooding of the Watermill and Powdermill streams and their main outflow – then called the Asten after the Haesten tribe.

Now it is called the Combe Haven and, having lived on Bexhill Road directly opposite Bulverhythe since 1947, I have watched our back garden and front roadway flood when the tide was high. I knew
how the area flooded regularly, sometimes requiring an army-style Bailey bridge over the waters to permit cars to travel along the A259.

In 2008 a management board with representatives from four local authorities – East Sussex County Council, Rother District Council, Hastings Borough Council (HBC) and Crowhurst Parish Council – was set up to guide the restoration of landfill areas at Pebsham and to protect and maintain the remaining countryside between Bexhill and St Leonards. In 2012 the board renamed the area Combe Valley Countryside Park (CVCP). This included Tiers 1, 2 and 3 of Bulverhythe Recreation Ground as a natural urban annex to the wildlife-rich sites of scientific interest in the main Combe Valley and Filsham Reed Beds – the largest area in Sussex.

In February 2013, I set up Friends of Combe Valley because of the remarkable wildlife of this area with its giant winter lake. This converted to a national charity in September 2015. Later, the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) and the Chief Constable kindly helped to fund the warden service, which is ongoing.

Proposal for housing

Fast forward to February 2018 when the Bulverhythe Protectors, led by Peter Clarke, started collecting funds to fight against the proposed large housing development on the flood plain of Combe Valley. 

In 2018, I met several times, over coffee and buns, with a HBC councillor at the De La Warr Pavilion café. The councillor explained that the housing needs of Hastings were so great that all the previous decisions on green conservation space would have to be overturned. Innovative technology would surely enable 190-plus homes to be built on the public recreation ground inside the formal CVCP boundary which extended to the coast and a short way out to sea. These houses had to be built on land that would be artificially raised, to stay above the natural winter flood plain of the ancient medieval harbour.

Now, exactly four years later, the planning application has been withdrawn on the advice of government agencies, ack-nowledging that the area is a natural flood plain not recommended for housing. Global warming and sea level rises must have been factors in this decision.

Future opportunities 

Rather than regret a wasted past, let us look for new opportunities. 

I hope that fresh co-operation between Friends of Combe Valley, Groundworks, HBC and Rother can result in an urban extension to the Countryside Park as originally planned. There could be new woodland, a physical exercise area, and a wheelchair-accessible pathway for people with disabilities.

During the time I have lived here, no flood remediation has ever taken place to protect the existing houses on Bexhill Road. This seems deeply unfair; theoretically, those new homes would have been protected – and yet existing homes would be left once more to fend for themselves. The 2018 new estate proposals were backed by Homes England with, potentially, around £5.8 million for flood remediation. It would make sense to ask Homes England to permit HBC’s retention of that money to protect the existing Bexhill Road housing stock, especially as a small housing estate is now planned behind 419 and 447 Bexhill Road despite flooding caveats within the planning documents. 

Another use of the Homes England funds would be to buy the Grove School site using a compulsory purchase order to ensure that the homes built there would be socially affordable. It seems that the majority of people who need houses in the Hastings area are not rich, and yet the schemes put forward hitherto have large components of unaffordable homes in order to satisfy the profit margins of the house-building companies and their shareholders. It might be possible for HBC to start their own house-building company and ensure that every one of the Grove site homes is affordable.

Meanwhile, HBC must under-stand and fully accept what Bulverhythe is – an ancient harbour with a winter flood plain, and to promote, with great pride, the remarkable wildlife-rich areas of Combe Valley with its reed beds and 30% of all the fen landscape in Sussex as part of the HBC green portfolio. No more building plans here, please.

PICTURE: David Dennis

Cllr Fitzgerald responded that a number of potential brownfield sites are zoned for residential development but being held back (“land-banked”) by their owners. He also pointed out that the West Marina area was technically brownfield, having been previously built upon. As for the prospective development of the lower tier at Bulverhythe he was far from apologetic, saying that the Labour-majority council had a clear mandate from the last council election to proceed with this project and “owed it” to West St Leonards to see it through. He didn’t mention that the ward electors of West St Leonards had voted in two Conservative party councillors in opposition.

Cllr Maya Evans, on the other hand, whose cabinet respon-sibilities are for the natural environment and leisure, has been strangely silent.

She may have in mind Jeremy Corbyn’s environmental policy manifesto, A Plan for Nature – for the many, not the few, at the last general election, which contained in its section on national planning policy a seemingly apposite message. As well as promising a home-building programme which delivered “net biodiversity gains”, Labour would “consult on new planning rules to stop developers building inappropriate housing in high-risk areas such as flood plains. We will instruct the Environment Agency to take a more robust approach to halting planned development where there is serious risk of flooding.”

It seems that the EA have taken this idea to heart even if the Hastings Labour party has not.

However, Cllr Fitzgerald’s cabinet colleague Andy Batsford, whose portfolio is Housing and Homelessness and who has long championed the Bulverhythe development, maintains a buoyant stance. Last week he posted comments on the Friends of Combe Valley Facebook page denying that the planned works to control the risk of flooding could result in “extra water being pushed up valley”. He claimed that the proposed sluice gate system would only be closed “during a 1 in a 100 year event” and that “the whole of the Bexhill Road area” would then be protected from flooding.

By David Dennis 

As he grew more confident and popular, money flowed, and he could relax and display his amazing talents to the full. Acknowledged as a child prodigy and admitted to the Royal Academy at 14, early in his career he came to the notice of the Sussex MP, Mad Jack Fuller of Rosehill (1757-1834), now buried in a pyramid at Brightling, East Sussex. Fuller, though sometimes a drunkard, was also a philanthropist, astute, innovative, kind and deserving of a better press. He backed Turner financially with many art commissions.

Turner, born in Covent Garden, London in 1775, worshipped reality and went to sea in storms. He sketched shipwrecks. He sailed up the east coast of England to Scotland and to Holland and Calais and was said to be ‘an excellent sailor’ by the journalist Cyrus Redding. In 1805, at the age of 30, he went to the River Medway to see HMS Victory anchored there after the Battle of Trafalgar and the tragedy of Lord Nelson’s death at the moment of triumph.  

Fishermen at Sea 1796

A Coast Scene with Fishermen hauling a boat ashore 1803-4

Hastings

Turner produced his Hastings Sketchbook from 1809 to 1814. He was in Hastings in 1810, conceiving ‘The Fish Market at Hastings’.  In this he showed his skill at disguising clouds as mountains, to give background height and compositional balance. Looking at this picture you might think Hastings was in the Alps, with a towering wall of ‘rock’ opposite the beach at Rock-a-Nore. 

The Fish Market at Hastings

On closer inspection you can see a shaft of sunlight passing through the ‘rock’. You realise that it is in fact a rolling bank of dark sea mist, caused by atmospheric cooling after rolling over Beachy Head and down across Pevensey Bay – as often seen today. 

Black Dogs

Turner used dogs for balance as they were likely to ‘wander’ into the right position if he ‘made them’. For example, almost tokenistic black dogs appear in the watercolour titled ‘Leeds’ of 1816, ‘Grouse Shooting on Beamsley Beacon’ in the same year and ‘New Moon’ painted in 1840. 

Fishing and Gulls

In Turner’s paintings of Hastings, a wide range of fish are depicted but what is unrealistic, as Hastings modern citizens will attest – is the total lack of seagulls. 

It is hard to find a Turner fishing scene where there are any birds, although they do occasionally appear in the storm and wreck paintings. A few gulls appear in ‘Fishermen at Sea’ 1796, ‘Pembroke Castle’ 1806 and ‘Fishing Boats and a Paddle Steamer’ 1825, and one gull as a space-filler in ‘Gosport’ 1829. 

Fishing boats and rigging are painted accurately with attention to detail, especially regarding the sea state, with rolling and pitching evident. The wave shapes and colours and shadows and reflections on wet sand and sea edge are also well observed.

Dawn after the Wreck – 1841

Martello Towers near Bexhill, Sussex – 1808/11

When Turner came to Bexhill in 1811, he completed the etching image ‘Martello Towers near Bexhill, Sussex’, which was then engraved by William Say. He had sketched it before in 1808. 

Fuller’s Commissions

From 1810, beginning possibly with drawings or sketches named ‘Hastings Fish Market’ and ‘A Hastings Lugger’, Mad Jack Fuller had given him many commissions. In 1819, Fuller’s larger commissioned set of views of Sussex had finally gone to press, after completion in 1816.

After a gap of several years, during which his fame grew, Turner returned to Hastings, aged 49 years, in 1824 to paint the watercolour, ‘Hastings – Fish Market on the Sands – Early Morning’, also bought by Mad Jack Fuller. We can now see this in Hastings Art Gallery.

A misty cloud bank rolls over Beachy Head, with its size and colour-depth reduced compared to the 1810 painting. Hastings Castle is made to appear as though it set on some ethereal Mount Olympus, a glowing yellow-orange massif. Galley Hill and St Leonards buildings are prominent on the horizon. To the left, an anchor lies embedded in the sand. To the right are the tall black net huts and also, most significantly, the net hut made of half a lugger, stood on end, all still preserved today. The orange Cretaceous sandstone cliffs, with their dinosaur footprints and ancient crocodile bones, stand remarkably high behind the East Parade strand. Some fisherfolk are dressed as Greeks. It is thought that Turner was alluding to the Greek War of Independence. This craziness was immensely popular with the public. ‘Maybe it is not Fuller who is mad, but Turner’, said some. Admittedly nowadays the people of Hastings dress up for Jack-in-the-Green and Pirate Day, but they have not fallen among Greeks. Once again, there are no seagulls to peck at the fish scraps.

Hastings – Fish Market on the Sands – Early Morning –1824

Turner Returns

He returned to the Hastings theme with ‘Shipwreck off Hastings’ in 1825 and ‘Line Fishing off Hastings’ in 1835. He plainly loved the town and his Hastings Sketchbook has hundreds of insightful drawings. 

In summary

Turner had a deep personal and emotional relationship with Hastings and the sea and that gave him the intellectual strength to paint in a wild way, refusing staid custom and preferring instead the depiction of passionate momentary truth. I could not find a blue plaque in Hastings Fish Market stating that he painted and sketched there many times. In fact, Hastings has not acknowledged Turner, yet it has commemorated the Duke of Wellington, Lewis Carroll, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was a major error to let Margate have the Turner Contemporary Gallery. Come on Hastings – where’s the love?

A Time Bomb On Tier 1 Development?

By David Dennis 

On the evening of 31st December 1943, a United States Army Air Force (USAAF) Liberator 24D long-range bomber crashed at Bulverhythe Recreation Ground. That ‘an American bomber crashed’ has been long known – but no other details were available, and the crash site was not registered with the Ministry of Defence or East Sussex County Council Archaeology Department. 

In recent months, after some careful and detailed research through the wartime archive public documents held by Hastings Borough Council, I have been able to show that this plane was the famous ‘Unstable Mabel’; and that the crash site lies not only within the Combe Haven Countryside Park but directly inside the area called Tier 1 where the council are planning to build a 192-home housing estate.

I recently made an application to the USAAF Second Air Division Memorial Library in Norwich who accepted the crash details. This was then followed by formal acceptance of the evidence by the Ministry of Defence. As a result, the Ministry has licensed me to lead excavations of the area on behalf of Friends of Combe Valley, subject to the landowner’s agreement under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986, and agreed that a memorial be made. I am also applying to the homeowners for permission to examine the back gardens of three homes in Bexhill Road for any material and personal effects left over from the crash. 

B-24s in flight, World War II
PICTURE: Imperial War Museum

The history is as follows.

Once the USA joined the war in Europe after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, RAF Hethel near Norwich in Norfolk was built by the British government for use by USAAF 2nd Combat Bombardment Wing – including the 389th Heavy Group known as the Sky Scorpions. They flew in from Lowry AAF base in Colorado in June 1943. In that group was the Consolidated Liberator Unstable Mabel of the 564th Bombardment Squadron.

The USAAF Eighth Air Force ordered the squadron to fit long-range ‘Tokyo Tanks’ in July 1943. These tanks did not have fuel gauges, but they boosted the mission capacity from 800 miles to 2,000 miles. The Group received a Distinguished Unit Citation for its famed low-level attack on the oil fields at Ploesti on 1st August 1943.

In October of that year, the Group was ordered to begin long distance bombing of Nazi forces in France. On Unstable Mabel’s final mission, pilot Captain Frank Wilby Ellis Jr., DFC and his crew took off from RAF Hethel in the early hours of 31st December to bomb Saint-Jean d’Angely-Fontenet airfield 390 kilometres south-west of Paris in the Cognac Region. They arrived over the target at 12.11 hours and then moved to bomb a second target at 12.35 hours – the Nazi Wolfpack submarine pens called the La Pallice Installation at La Rochelle on the French coast of Charente Maritime.

Having flown one thousand miles on their mission out, they now had to fly back the same distance to RAF Hethel. As they approached the English coast near Bexhill, they ran out of fuel. Witnesses said they saw an engine fire start. The aircraft circled over Pebsham, where a rudimentary aerodrome had been constructed at the request of the air ace Sir Alan Cobb. Captain Ellis gave the order to abandon the aircraft and his nine crew baled out. Captain Ellis then crash-landed the aircraft on the dark and soaking wet Bulverhythe Recreation Ground instead of the aerodrome, the sun having already set.

The huge Liberator bomber slid across the playing fields where Hastings Rangers Football Club had its HQ and crashed into the Sports Pavilion opened by Prince Edward (of Abdication fame), totally demolishing it down to the foundations. The aircraft then crossed the water-filled ditch at the back of the houses at Bexhill Road and entered the gardens of three homes, demolishing fences and a greenhouse. 

Captain Ellis was an outstandingly brave pilot to land the burning aircraft in the dark at Bulverhythe during the wartime blackout. He and his crew, all of whom are believed to have survived, were true heroes. More research is continuing to obtain the detailed history of the mission, and the US Ambassador to the UK has been asked to help by finding Captain Ellis’s logbook. 

Sadly, he himself, by then a Colonel, was killed in December 1957 when he piloted a TB-47B Stratojet in thick fog in California. Attempting to land at March Air Force Base, the huge bomber struck Mount Palomar not far from the famous giant telescope. All on board were killed.

• The writer is a retired RAF officer and the Warden Service Co-ordinator for the Friends of Combe Valley. He began to investigate the crash with the
help of David Hatherell, an expert in air warfare history, and of Alexis Markwick, who devised the Bexhill OSM History Map and liaises with Bexhill Museum.

The council, which owns the land, has indicated that 76 of these homes (40%) will be made available as ‘affordable housing’, providing local residents with the opportunity to buy a home through shared ownership or to rent through a registered provider at an affordable price. Affordable rent will be based on the Hastings Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rate.

Cllrs Cox and Batsford take a walk in Combe Valley
PICTURE: David Dennis

A planning application will be made in due course to Rother District Council. The land lies within Rother’s jurisdiction, even though owned by HBC. Before that, there was due to be a further public consultation event yesterday (31st October), and HBC will share “emerging proposals” followed by a Pre-Application Forum at a later date. Further information can be found at www.hastings.gov.uk/new-homes.

Local opposition to these plans has concentrated on their location on land that has regularly flooded in the past. Local ecologist and recently appointed steward at the country park, David Dennis, believes that the whole ecology of the park may be put at risk if the Tier 1 site is effectively removed from the flood plain – see his impassioned article below.

Cllrs Cox and Batsford take a walk in Combe Valley along with Friends treasurer William Ackroyd
PICTURE: David Dennis

Mr Dennis recently took the council’s lead member for housing, Andy Batsford, and fellow councillor Ruby Cox, who is chair of the Combe Valley Countryside Park community interest company, on a two-and-a-half hour ramble through the park to demonstrate the value of its existing role in sustaining local wildlife. It seems that he succeeded in this, but not in persuading either of them that the Tier 1 development should not proceed – see Cllr Batsford’s equally passionate article alongside.