that Mr. Robertson was an influential Conservative might have made no difference in the expressed opposition to his application, but it had a significant look that Messrs. Putland, Winter, Howell, Gausden, Reeves, and other leading Liberals voted against Alderman Clement’s motion that as a matter of courtesy a committee should meet Mr. Robertson.
Road at Prospect Place. On the 4th of October, on the recommendation of the Roads Committee, the Local Board declined to dedicate the road at Prospect place until it was put in better repair. This road, with its buildings, was on Cuckoo Hill, and immediately behind it was, and still is, Dorset place, some historical association of which is here given:-
Rocky Road was the original site of what is now Dorset Place – the road over which the Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria had to be conveyed in 1834, when proceeding from Hastings to St. Leonards, in consequence of the lower road at the White Rock having been broken down by a high tide. At the Sessions of November, 1775, on the complaint of Thomas Deudney, of Gensing farm, that the highway leading from the town between the Priory farm and St. Michael’s cliff, towards Hollington, was very steep and narrow, and almost impassable for carriages, it was ordered “that Benjamin Foster, the owner of the said hill, do repair and widen the same under a penalty of 20s.” This was a narrow lane cut through the rock known as Cuckoo Hill to the top of the White rock and thence to Bohemia and Hollington. The Benjamin Foster here named was then the occupier of the farm then known as General Murray’s Land (Bohemia); and it might have been that Foster viewed it as a hardship to have to keep in repair a road which although bordering his farm, was practically a public highway. Yet he might have consoled himself with the fact that in that particular year his poor-rate was only 2s. in the pound, whereas in the following year (1776) it was 3s. When Benjamin Foster had passed away, and William Foster (presumably his son) occupied the same land, the poor-rate was 5s in the pound. Also, when William Foster ceased to be a tenant of the said farm – then the property of William Green, Esq., (Gen. Murray’s brother-in-law) – and Ann Foster became the tenant, the poor-rate alone was 18s. 6d. in the pound. Think of this ye distressed farmers during the last decade of the 19th century, that in the 4th year of the same century, Mrs. Foster had to pay £49 9s. 9d. on a rental of £55 10s! In the coloured view which is annexed to these remarks will be seen a picturesqueness which disappeared as soon as the site was appropriated to the present uninteresting and unarchitectural range known as Dorset Place (for coloured view of “Rocky Road” see over)
