Happy Birthday Hastings Pier
Steve Peak presents the history of Hastings pier on its 150th birthday Hastings Pier celebrates its 150th birthday on 5 August. It started a new phase in the history of the British seaside piers, being the first pier designed as…
Bavarding with HIP
A rather special Barvard Bar event took place at St Leonards’ Regency Rooms - aka Crown House - earlier this month. Tim ‘Bavard’ Crook generously loaned his concept and his skills as a compere and stand-up comic to the Hastings…
News from the Country Park
The Bale House at Hastings Country Park will celebrate an official Grand Opening tomorrow (Saturday) financed by the Platinum Jubilee Fund. Friends of Hastings Park Nature Reserve, operators Groundwork South and Hastings Borough Council (HBC) are combining to put on…
How the Rock Fair Ended
As part of his history of America Ground Steve Peak wrote about the three main fairs, and how the killjoys ended the biggest and best – the Rock Fair. Three ancient fairs were held every year in Hastings until they…
Rock-a-Nore: once the Eco-Nore of the East
Local historian Steve Peak explores some of the ways Rock-a-Nore has been ; Instead of pumping all our sewage into the sea, why can’t Hastings have a recycling plant to turn it into fertiliser? And rather than ruin the countryside…
The America Ground
By Steve Peak In the early 19th century, the America Ground, 8½ acres of Hastings’ town centre, was an open piece of beach, beyond the borough boundary and with no obvious owner. It was gradually occupied by a thousand or…
Hastings Commons Diary
A semi-regular round-up of everything going on in the Hastings Commons By Andrew Myers What is the Hastings Commons? It’s a place – a collection of buildings in the America Ground, Hastings. It’s an ecosystem of organ-isations working together –…
A Very Hastings Riot: The story of the town’s iconic net shops
Sheds of various shapes and sizes have stood on the shingle in front of Hastings Old Town for centuries, but it was a council planning decision in 1835 that created the design and layout of the distinctive net shops that…