Commissioners' doings - A mild winter - Pig-pounds in East Ascent
period.[a] The first in order of date would be the Commissioners’ meeting of January sixth. The members present at that meeting were Messrs. Jeffries, Wood, T. Brown, H. W. Brown, J. Burton, R. Deudney, Musgrave Brisco, C. H. Southall, H. Farncomb, and W. Waghorne. The two offices of Town Surveyor and Rate Collector had been held by Mr. Tom Leave, who found the latter post a very troublesome one, and having tendered his resignation of the same, such resignation was accepted on condition of his collecting the arrears of £31 18s. 1d. within a week. He was then to be paid £7 10s. for extra services, not for collecting rates, but for his work as surveyor. Mr. John Peerless — who, in subsequent years, was honourably connected with the schools, the church, and other institutions of the town — was then appointed a rate-collector in the place of Mr. Leave, and for which post he gave sureties to the amount of £400.
This amount of sureties was considered at that time to be very large, taking into consideration the smallness of the collections. But the low condition of the Commissioners’ funds, and. the constant drain upon them, together with the extreme difficulty of borrowing money, made them, perhaps, all the more precise in exacting ample securities from persons holding offices of trust under them. The Act of Parliament required the formation of a Sinking-fund, and the clerk on this occasion, as on many others, reminded the Commissioners of such requirement. No action was, however, taken in the matter, for the simple reason that there was no money with which to establish such a fund.
It was sometimes a hard matter to find money, apart from other disbursements, to pay the Gas Company for lighting the public lamps, which at that time cost about £150 a year. The Commissioners had no "Bobby-blues" in their service to draw money from the exchequer, but they had the wages of their solitary beadle to pay and as it was cold weather just at that time, they ventured to tax the public purse for the purchase of a great coat and a truncheon for the use of their sole representative of Bumbledom. Mr, Burton lodged a protest against the rating of the Subscription-gardens and the Assembly-rooms, and the Commissioners, taking a favourable view of the protest reduced the rating of the former from £60 to £20, and that of the latter to one-half, The quarterly meetings of the board were again changed to the last Mondays in March, June, September and December.
The next occurrence that suggests itself as worthy of a passing notice is that of a large shoal of mackerel which on the 12th of February attracted the attention of the inhabitants. This was looked upon as quite phenomenal, both on account of the time of year and the floating of the mackerel close to the shore. Many of them were caught by hand, and one of the fish was got hold of close to the water's edge by a lady and gentleman, which on being put into the scale was found to weigh 3lbs. I remember a similar scene.at Hastings about 10 years previously, but that was in the summer time, and the weather was very warm. In the later instance too, although in the winter time, the weather was abnormally mild for the time of year, there having been a remarkable absence of frost all the season. This circumstance might, therefore, have had some. effect in bringing our piscatorial visitors before their usual time. And the general mildness of the winter does not appear to have been succeeded, as is sometimes the case, by any noticeable re-action of temperature in the spring. Indeed, the latter - or at least a portion of it - seems to have been as unseasonably warm as the former, for I find I have a note that on the 12th of May the thermometer at St. Leonards registered the extraordinary temperature of 85 degrees.
Whether this unusual heat exerted any influence on the temper of the inhabitants it would be difficult to determine, but I have it on record that some of them waxed rather warm at about that time when called upon for the rates; they alleged that they were unduly and unfairly assessed. One of the complainants was a Mr. Gill, of 32 Marina, who was also a lodging-house keeper at Pelham Crescent and Beach Cottages, who being also a Commissioner, remonstrated with his brother officials against what he thought was an exorbitant tax. Similar representations were made by other property holders, the effect of which was not so much to reduce their assessment as to increase the rating of those who were supposed to have been too highly favoured. Thus it was that Mr. Norsworthy’s assessment for 1 and 2 West Ascent was raised from £40 to £70 each, and Capt. Davies’s to £67. The meeting at which this particular stir was made was attended by Messrs. North and Warre, who at that time were the two Parliamentary Representatives as well as two of the St. Leonards Commissioners.
On the 11th of March the Commissioners held a special meeting to receive tenders for the construction of an additional sea-wall, to extend 300 yards westward of the then existing wall. The only tender received was that of Messrs. Homan and Scott's which was £735. This was accepted with the understanding that Mr. Burton would undertake to pay interest on that sum until the rates should amount to £800.
Among other business transacted was the giving permission to Mr. Burton to lower and otherwise reduce the footpaths under the Archway of the North Lodge. Also, in consequence of the sea breaking over the new wall whilst in progress of construction by Messrs. Homan and Scott, the contractors were to be instructed to build the said wall three feet higher, with twenty counterposts to be added for the better security of the west-end, and two step-ways to be made. The estimate for this additional work was £124 1s, 2d. This 300 feet of wall extended from nearly opposite the church to the Sussex Hotel, and was about five or six feet nearer the sea than the more substantial wall which has since taken the place of both it and its immediate successor. The wall was completed about two months before the Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria came to reside at St. Leonards, but - as was predicted by those who had many times seen the roads submerged at high spring tides - the sea very soon made inroads upon it, and the wall became a source of constant trouble to the Commissioners until its final destruction, some two years later.
Up to this time it had been the practice of the inhabitants to dry their clothes on the beach, but the beadle was instructed not to allow it to be continued. He was also desired to give notice to Messrs. Minster, Burgess, Beck, Hawkins and Stevens, that unless they removed their pigs and other nuisances from their premises before two o’clock on the morrow, they would be immediately summoned. What! exclaims the reader, Was there ever such a thing as a piggery in East Ascent? — Is it possible that a principal thoroughfare in a fashionable town could have ever been a region of swine-herds? Yes, it was even so; but not, perhaps, in a manner quite in conformity with the picture in the reader’s fancy. The porcine odours might have been present to the sense of smell, but the subjects of them were not prominently-visible to the sense of sight.
The "other nuisances" complained of were to be seen any day on the road and the footpaths, but the pigs and pig pounds were only to be found in the rear of the houses. As it was a practice in the old town to keep herds of swine on the sea-fronts of houses in the Rope-walk and along under the cliff at East-well, as also in the rear of houses contiguous to the Bourne, so when some of the inhabitants of the old town migrated to the new, it was thought to be the proper thing for piggy to have a sty within a moderate range of its proprietor’s own dwelling.
It could not, however, be tolerated by the authorities that swineherds and human habitations should be in such close proximity in a town of so fashionable and refined a character, and hence the fiat went forth as above described. The mandate was obeyed by removing the pigs and their appurtenances to a site behind the St. Leonards Mews, which at that time was sufficiently away from the houses, but is now occupied by Stanhope place. Albeit, in a district which was neither in the jurisdiction of the St. Leonards Commissioners nor the Hastings Commissioners — I mean on the east side of the Archway, a dame (whose name if applied to one of the precious metals would be to that which is of greater value than silver) was once known to keep a member of the porcine family in a bed-room. She did this, probably, on the sentimental plea of "Love me, love my hog."[b]
But, turning again to the St. Leonards beadle, it was his unpleasant duty to once more caution Mr. Mitchell not to infringe the Act of Parliament by obstructing with his furniture the footway at the Colonnade. I have before alluded to the almost impossibility of a would-be purchaser getting into Mr. Mitchell’s shop on account of its extremely limited capacity; but, apart from this, I believe there was a reluctant spirit in this furniture dealer to conform to the orders of a legally constituted authority which had not been long in existence, and was continually changing its members.
Walls broken down by the sea - "Tidal Cain" and the East Ascent &c.
It is not infrequently found that the unusually mild winters are in other ways the most turbulent; and this was in a great measure the case with that of 1834. Strong winds were of frequent occurrence during January, February, and March, and it was during the last named month, more particularly, that Messrs. Homan and Scott were put to much trouble and expense in repairing the damage to the sea-wall which they were then building, and which, as I have shown, was subsequently made higher and stronger agreeably to the wish of the Commissioners. During the summer months the sea was less menacing, and the work was completed by September, notwithstanding that a severe gale on the 31st of August put it to a rather severe test. But it was on the 18th of October — two days after the destruction of the Houses of Parliament by fire — that the sea’s turbulence did the greatest damage. A violent gale blew from the -
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