Imagine Walking 1066 Harold’s Way

There can be no more emotive walk

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We have just finished the 1066 Harold’s Way walk and are feeling very pleased with ourselves! We live near Battle and, having walked the 1066 country walk last year, we got the walking bug. We were really pleased to then find a copy of your 1066 Harold’s Way book in a shop in Battle and have really enjoyed the variety of the different sections, the industrial and social history along the Thames and the wildlife and different terrains along the way. Thank you so much for writing the book! Karen and Tim

I finished my walk in Battle last Friday, tired and feet a bit sore, but I feel so elated that I did it and the countryside was so beautiful. Your book is an inspiration and very interesting historically. Christine N

www.1066haroldsway.co.uk

A Taste of St Leonards

Discover two great pubs just five minutes from the seafront.

Enjoy a walk through St Leonards on Sea with this short You Tube clip:

Walk 3: Pub Walks in Hastings and St Leonards

www.1066haroldsway.co.uk

From a Beer on The Pier

Discover two great pubs in St Leonards,

Just five minutes walk from the seafront.

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Walk 3: Pub Walks in Hastings and St Leonards

Featuring – The Horse and Groom and the St Leonard

The Sunday Reader

A Taste of St Leonards – The Horse and Groom

Posh St Leonards, still full of Victorian and Edwardian grandeur. Those dreams that occupied the rich and famous have been largely replaced by a more pragmatic approach to urban living. The big houses still command Burton St Leonards but many have been converted to flats. The little terraced cottages, that housed the tradesmen and the washerwomen, now possess a chic that is more appealing and far more affordable.

Burton St Leonards was the first new seaside resort for the wealthy and became instantly popular with royalty and aristocracy. There were service areas for the new town; Mercatoria for shopping, and Lavatoria for laundry.

It was said ‘We should look in vain on any other coast in England for such a range of buildings as those he (James Burton) has raised below St Leonards Cliff; of a superior order, though not so ornamented as some of his previous structures. None but the unrivalled crescents of Bath and Bristol is superior to the Marina of St Leonards’. (Spas of England and Principal Sea-Bathing Places A.B. Granville, 1841).’

‘The Horse and Groom’ was St Leonards’ first pub, built and licensed in 1829 for the benefit of the workforce busy constructing the new town of St Leonards. It is on record that they were so thirsty that the pub opened before the windows were installed. Workers also came to the Horse and Groom on Saturday nights to be paid their wages and were called in from the street one by one. They came again on Sundays to quench another thirst, this time to listen to the newspapers being read aloud. Edward Thebay was ‘Sunday reader’ at the Horse and Groom for many years. (Hastings Pub History).

Thirsty workers/walkers still seek out The Horse and Groom. Warm and friendly, the two rooms are separated by a horseshoe bar and a back room for larger groups. The beers, Harvey’s Best and one or two guests, are always good and you get the feeling of a proper pub with no taped music, no food (just cobs on the bar, if you are lucky) and eclectic decoration. A quiet, atmospheric, dog friendly pub where you can enjoy good conversation and when I visited, the guests were Young’s Winterwarmer, Longman Long Blade and a fine Green King Abbot that slipped down a treat.

Pub Walks in Hastings and St Leonards is available from Hastings Tourist Information, Hastings Pier and from The Bookkeeper, Kings Road, St Leonards and by mail order.

For a full list of stockists visit www.1066haroldsway.co.uk

CAMRA WhatPub

 

 

Old Settles, Wooden Floors

Pub Walks in Hastings and St Leonards – Walk 3

A Taste of St Leonards – The St Leonard

At first glance, there is nothing to London Road except a mishmash of shop fronts, infills and traffic and that can often offend those more used to gleaming shopping centres and pedestrianised streets but you must look further into the character of both the shops and the people who belong to London Road.

My wife and I grew up in Nottingham and we both remember similar streets, indeed, my father had a thriving pharmacy on one such street now demolished. Everyone knew my father and so everyone knew me. St Anns Wells Road, Alfred Street and Arkwright Street all provided everything that you needed from sweet shops and cake shops, milliners, butchers and bakers, green grocers and grocers, a Home and Colonial, a Dewhurst’s, book shops and cafes, a pub on every corner and almost as many churches. To me, London Road is the same.

A pint in the CAMRA award winning St Leonard, creaking with atmosphere, old settles, wooden floors and life, helps the musings for ‘Pub Walks in Hastings and St Leonards’ and the forthcoming ‘Pub Walks in 1066 Country’.

The St Leonard is not some country pub but a warm and friendly town pub, refurbished in 2012, (it was formerly known as The Warrior Gate a corruption of the original 1833 name Warhouse Gate, taken from the name of an old lime kiln).

Now its wooden floors, mismatched tables and chairs, local art work and three regularly changing guest beers create a busy urban chic.

There is popcorn served with drinks and a food tasting menu available that includes sausage rolls, scotch eggs, charcuterie plate and pork pies and pizzas can be delivered to your table.

On one visit, I tried Brighton Bier South Coast IPA 5%, St Austell Trelawny 3.8%, Hogs Back TEA 4.2% and a taste of Prehistoric Amber 4.5%. All were well conditioned and well-kept but on the next visit, they are likely to have changed. Another time, I was impressed with the Franklins St Leonard, Franklins Greedy Guvnor as well as the Hogsback T.E.A.- again!

There is always a welcome and despite the restricted hours (Wednesday to Saturday 5pm -11pm and Sunday 3pm – 9pm) it is one to visit, to drink a pint and to sit and think – after all, they say that there is a book in us all! With such restricted opening hours it may be one to note in that black beer stained notebook to return to later.

If it is closed, there is consolation opposite in The Oak Bakery where money can be invested in their wonderful and moreish ‘Portuguese tarts’!

Check out the walk on

Pub Walks in Hastings and St Leonards is available from Hastings Tourist Information and from The Bookkeeper, Kings Road, St Leonards and by mail order from www.1066haroldsway.co.uk

Discover and Explore Walks from History Walks

To see all the walks and for details of how to buy:

Click Here

Links: CAMRA WhatPub, Hastings Tourist Information, Stagecoach

The Perfect Finish

The Royal and The Secret St Leonards Walking Trail

The railway came to Gensing and the station, designed by William Tress (architect of most of the stations on the line to Tunbridge Wells) was built in 1851, marooned a mile from the seafront.

The station made St Leonards and Hastings accessible by train on a direct line from London and from along the south coast. First class for the wealthy and second and third for everyone else and suddenly St Leonards was on the map.

The coming of the railway heralded the development of both London Road, King’s Road and Warrior Square and the Railway Inn was opened in 1854, first as a beer house and later with a full licence, on the corner of Kings Road and Western Road. There was little else around.

As the town grew and grew, the land around the station developed with a hotel built (1876) on the opposite corner to the Railway Inn. By 1884 it was known as the Royal Hotel with a large and classy saloon bar, a public bar and a ‘snug’ that catered for all classes, but everyone knew their place in the drinking hierarchy.

One can imagine the quiet snug, the spit and sawdust bar and the upmarket saloon of wood panelling, polished floors, glittering chandeliers and maybe a potted palm or two all reminiscent of the large Victorian pubs that still exist in parts of London.  The commercial traveller, his trilby and heavy three-piece suit, his pocket watch and his case of samples, eating lunch, buttons straining and perhaps time for another bottle of beer and a cigar before the train home.

In his place today are suits and open necked shirts, bringing the noise of shared jokes and conversation, grouped by the bar and ladies sat, with a bottle of white wine in a chiller, sharing gossip. It is a meeting pub, a drink straight from the train or from work pub. It is like the bars that I used to visit, straight from work in London, some 45 years ago but without the layers of smoke. I’m glad to see that it is alive and well in St Leonards and that pint of London Pride brings back more memories (Theakston Lightfoot was the alternative) and Pride wins it for me.

I would have liked to have seen the Royal in all its Victorian splendour but, after its recent doldrum years, it has been transformed into a one roomed destination pub. The high ceilings and sense of space are remnants of its former grandeur and although the wood panelling is now deep blue it is the clientele that has changed the most in this mix and match pub – it is now the perfect finish for the Secret St Leonards Walking Trail.

Walks in 1066 Country

http://www.1066haroldsway.co.uk

A Walk around Rye

An Urban Ramble

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Rye, an island citadel once surrounded by water, but the winds and the storms won a great battle and the sea retreated leaving a town marooned inland.

Rye, with its medieval airs and cobbled streets, its history as a Cinque Port, the smugglers and its people, is one of the most picturesque towns in England.

Stir the imagination and explore Rye’s long history of French invasions, smuggled brandy, tea and tobacco and of an infamous churchyard murder.

For more information:

www.1066haroldsway.co.uk