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From Historical Hastings
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included in the St. Leonards postal delivery; especially as the four-horse nightly mail from London, taking up the country mails on its route, after depositing the Hastings bags, went forward to St. Leonards and there remained till night, when the up journey was performed in reversed order; thus enabling the deliver in both towns to be commenced at the same moment, and the St. Leonards receiving box at night to be closed only a short time before the one at Hastings. It was clear, then, to any intelligent mind not pledged to the real motives of the promoters of change that to abolish the St. Leonards post-office with its money-order office, its poste-restante, and its other accessories for its duties to be performed by an office 1½ miles distant, would, if sanctioned be an act of folly, as well as of injustice. In 1832 - four years after the commencement of St. Leonards - Mr. Burton obtained an Improvement Act, under a board of Commissioners, whose jurisdiction extended to the east end of the Marina; and, not to be outdone, Hastings also, in the same year, obtained an Improvement Act under Commissioners whose jurisdiction extended to the west end of York buildings. Between these two governing bodies, the district had to (be) managed parochially. In 1834, the lease granted by Government to the inhabitants of the Priory ground terminated, and in the general exodus that followed, many persons replanted their property on purchased plots eastward and northward of the St Leonards Archway, which had already assumed the name of St. Leonards, but, in common parlance "St. Leonards Without" in contradistinction of "St. Leonards Within"; thus showing their close connection with St. Leonards, proper, as did Bishopsgate-without and Aldersdgate-without, their connection with the city of London; or again, locally and parochially, as St. Leonards outbounds and St. Mary-in-the-Castle outbounds. The immigrants from the Priory-ground (who knew how the Corporation of Hastings were put out of court by the Government officials when they put in a claim for the land which the Crown was about to appropriate, and who also, when the Reform celebration took place in 1832, would not consent to walk in the procession or to join Hastings in the festivities except as "Americans" under their new banner of stars and stripe) were not likely to call their habitations in London road, Norman road, Gensing road, Shepherd street, &c. by the name of Hastings even if there were no other conditions to consider; hence the description in the conveyancing deeds was generally "St. Leonards" or "St. Mary Magdalen", and in all cases, without exception, their business cards, invoices, circulars and advertisements bore the impress "St. Leonards" or "St. Leonards-on-sea". At the same time the front line sections continued to extend from west to east, and included (Seymour place (where the Queen Dowager resided as medically advised to St. Leonards), Warrior-square, Eversfield place, Verulam place, and the houses in White-