This image shows some soldiers of the South Wales Borderers billeted at the Highlands Hotel in Boscabel Road, St Leonards in February 1915. These soldiers were of the 7th Service Battalion of the South Wales Borderers...
This image shows the recruits of the 5th Battery of the Royal Field Artillery Reserves returning to barracks after a football match played on Horntye Fields. The match, Hastings versus Eastbourne & District,  finished 5-1 to the Eastbourne team. They are…
This image shows the Right Section of the 2nd Home Counties Brigade, Royal Field Artillery leaving Hastings for service in the war. The original photograph appeared in the Hastings & St Leonards Pictorial Advertiser on 17th August 1914. The 2nd…
This Then and Now image shows the officers and men of the St Johns Ambulance Brigade standing outside of their former Hastings headquarters. The original photograph was taken in August 1914 shortly before the entire brigade of twenty men left…
The image above shows King George V at West Marina Gardens when he visited on 30th August 1918. He was reviewing Royal Air Force Cadets who were stationed at Bexhill, St Leonards and Hastings. After arriving by train at the West…
This image shows the Hastings Lifeboat, Charles Arkcoll II, being moved through Robertson Street to BoPeep for launch on 25th April 1908. It would have been quicker to pull the lifeboat than row it against a strong westerly gale. There…
This image shows two formidable looking ladies crossing Hastings town centre. A typical urban scene, apart from the military vehicles they are passing. This is Hastings during the early period of the second World War. A town subject to aerial attacks and…
At 1pm on Sunday the 23rd May 1943 10 Focke-Wulf 190’s dropped 25 bombs and machine gunned the town. The Swan Hotel was one of five public houses and two hotels hit by the bombs. The hotel was packed with…
This image shows the tram tracks being laid along Mount Pleasant Road, Hastings in about 1905. Proposals for a tram system were first proposed as early as 1891 but there was stiff resistance to the enterprise by town councillors. They thought…
The St Leonards Bathing Pool, designed and built by Sid Little, was opened in May 1933. The pool space measured 100m by 27m with a 10m high diving board. Unsurprisingly, given the architect, the bathing pool was an entirely concrete…
The above image shows part of the anti invasion defences put up along Hastings seafront during 1940* I can’t imagine how it would have felt to the residents of Hastings seeing these go up. German forces had conquered great swathes…
The image above shows where the Hastings seafront bandstand used to be. There isn’t much information about it on the internet, but it was definitely there in 1902 and probably was a victim to Sidney Little’s renovation of the seafront.…
