Hastings
Gothic Groves and Ferny Glens

This is an unusual walk taking you through several of the fine green spaces in Hastings. Although there are places where you are walking in suburban streets, there are also long sections of wood and parkland where you would think you were miles from the town.
The walk is about 7 miles long and one of its many delights is the descent of Old Roar Ghyll which has its own micro-climate with rare plants and an unusual atmosphere. St Helen's woods and parkland are also a delight with their mature trees, orchids and some unusual plants. It ought to be possible to include a visit to the ruined St Helen's church in this walk but access to it has been cut off by housing developments. You can reach the church and its graveyard which is now a massive and active badger sett by making a detour along the Elphinstone Road. Explorer map 124 shows the paths.
Hastings station is easy to reach by train and bus and there are refreshments and toilets available there and in Alexandra Park which you walk through on the way out and the way back. Alexandra Park is worth an outing to itself - it has a magnificent collection of (some unusual) trees, a large reservoir with lots of birds and a chalybeate spring. The walk directions may seem complicated but they are the best route I've found that takes in three lovely green areas of Hastings.

Walk Directions

1. Turn right as you leave Hastings station and follow the footpath by the telephone kiosks at the edge of the station forecourt.
See story Cinque Ports
Carry on past the Royal Mail buildings and turn left when you reach the road. Take the first right which is Cornwallis Gardens then walk up to a crossroads, where you cross and then carry on up Holmesdale Gardens. Look out for a footpath on your right, with a map marking that this is the entrance to Summerfields.

2. This is the first of the green spaces. When the path forks, take the right fork marked to Bohemia and Horntye. The footpath which follows the perimeter of the woods is clear and surfaced; it continues past the wood sculpture and on up the hill until you reach a big aerial mast at the top. You can keep to this surfaced path or turn left into the woods - much more fun - by the pond called the Hendley Repose and follow the path keeping the water on your right. The path leads up some shallow steps and comes to a brick and stone grotto built round a spring with a pool - an early water feature. Cross the stone bridge and carry on up some more shallow steps among bluebells and wood anemones in spring.

3. On the right you'll see a path leading down some steps to a wooden bridge. Cross over the water at this point and follow the path up the steps on the other side and bear left towards what looks like a walled garden. Turn left, keeping the wall on your right, passing a stone seat and a weeping willow by a pool.
See Willow story
Carry on past the locked door of the walled garden. Turn right and walk up through the woods and continue up hill. At a crossroads marked by a large holm oak and a beech, carry on in the same direction, which is up the hill until you reach the exit from the woods.
Near the exit of Summerfields you'll find Butcher's Broom, an evergreen shrub with pointed stems with flowers growing out of the centres of what look like leaves but which actually are its stems. It has red berries which can be found on it at most times of the year. This is an unusual plant which doesn't have leaves and is a marker of ancient woodland. Its presence here suggests that although Summerfields is part of an old manorial estate with signs of planting and development of water features, there were woods here from long before.

4. As you leave the woods you'll see a tall mast on your right. Walk in the same direction you have been travelling between two sets of green railings and continue along the road you come to which is Horntye Road. It goes slightly downhill to Newgate Road where you turn right. Over on the left you'll see the entrance to a park. Go in and take the path that goes to the right and follows the perimeter of the park, with the hedge on your right. There are parallel paths to this one, among the trees which you can choose, but stay near the top of the hill you are on. The path arrives at steps which you take down to a main road. Cross the road and follow the footpath opposite to the left and down into Alexandra Park.
See story Alexandra Park
Turn left and walk along the bottom of the valley, past the waterworks building and two houses keeping left round the miniature railway.

5. Continue along the valley bottom on the left of the stream until you come to the signed chalybeate fountain. To the right of this is a bank with scots pines on it and in front of this is a green metal bridge. Cross the bridge and stay on the tarmac track heading towards a set of steps that leads up the bank to the road. (You'll walk past the reservoir on the return trip.) Cross the road where there is an island and opposite you will see a twitten going up steps leading away from the road and the park.

6. At the top of the twitten turn left and then immediately right into Park Crescent. Stay on Park Crescent on the left hand side of the road and walk until it becomes a track and then a twitten which goes to the right of some posh new houses. Follow the path by the boundary fence which doubles back a bit, but don't be tempted to cut through the woods - you'll only end up in someone's garden (guess how I know this?).

7. There's a stile which you cross and then turn right into a road with modern houses. Almost immediately you will see ahead of you another twitten. Turn right at the end of it - opposite is a school - and continue along Park Avenue until it joins a track. Slightly to the right you'll see an entrance to St Helen's Wood local nature reserve.
See story St Helen's Wood and Grey Owl
Enter, and look across to your right where you'll see an entrance to a field. Follow the path across the field downhill towards the woods.
Hastings has two well known women travellers who may well have walked in these woods - Anne Brassey who went round the world in the yacht Sunbeam in 1876-7, and Marianne North who travelled in all 5 continents collecting and painting plants. Her work is displayed in its own gallery at Kew. There's more about her in the Fairlight walk.

8. There's a path along the edge of the woods and then a gate which is easy to miss. Look out for a spreading hazel coppice in the wood edge and a big clump of gorse in the field - the gate is before you reach the gorse. Go down the steps and through the gate, cross over the track in front of you and carry on in the same direction you're walking in. Look for a broken down gate which has an old "St Helen's Park" sign on it and go through it and down some steps. There's a monkey puzzle tree in the field on your left and a yellow berried holly on the right.
See Monkey Puzzle story
There's a wide path leading through the woods. Follow this until you come to a big clearing with a landmark cedar tree. There are benches and maps and a picnic area.

9. Turn left at the cedar and take the wide ride that passes to the right of the municipal barbecue and then a pond and dip where there is an enormous beech tree. Take the path that goes off to the right by this pond and continue up and along the right side of the stream. At the top, the path bends back on itself but you need to turn left onto a gravel track. Don't go through the metal gate ahead of you but over the stile on the right and over a plank walkway that crosses a muddy spring. You'll find yourself in an oak pasture field with 2 paths that lead across it.
Old St Helen's church stands as a ruin at the top of the hill, but is not accessible from the park. Because of the complexities of land ownership and boundaries in this area - some land owned by the Park Trust, some by the Church trust, some by developers of the housing estate that borders the park, and some by the Council, the footpaths that would normally lead to and from an old chuch have been lost which is frustrating for walkers because the church stands at the hilltop and is clearly on an ancient site that was possibly used for worship before Christianity was established. The ruins are at present surrounded by ugly fencing and badgers have colonised the graveyard. It seems that there may be plans for making the ruins safe and more pleasing at some future time.

10. Take the left hand path and walk across the field towards a fence on your left. Go through the gate into the next field and walk (leftwards) down into the valley past horse paddocks and sheds and out of the field by the gate at the corner (near the sheds). Turn right onto a track. Walk up the track with woods on your right and houses on your left - it's more of a road now. Follow it up to Grange Road and turn left.

11. Keep on Grange Road until it comes to a T junction with Hillside Road where you turn right and then left along Parkstone Road. Walk along the right hand side and when you come to bungalow 11, walk down between the houses on your right into Cedar Close. Turn left to walk across the grass between smallish trees. You're heading towards no 14 and the path you're on, Cedar Close, becomes Old Roar Road.
This area was a favourite walking place of artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Lizzie Siddal - they scratched their initials on a stone near the waterfall but I've never been able to find it. There are many stories about these lovers who spent some years in Hastings. "The Pre-Raphaelite Trail in Sussex" by Peter Wise is a good guide book.

12. Turn right when you reach Old Roar Road proper carry on down through the gate. Continue past the Roundel on your left until you see a ghyll on your left. Soon after this there's a red dogpoo bin on your left, and there's a path going off to the left. Take this path which leads into Old Roar Ghyll.
See story Old Roar

13. Stay on the path across the bridge, and it will lead you away from the ghyll into a suburban road. Turn right and walk down until you come to number 21 where there's an unmarked path to the right which will lead you back to the ghyll. Follow the path down the ghyll as it crosses and re-crosses the stream. When you come to the big road bridge make sure you take the lower path which keeps you in the valley which gradually flattens out and becomes marshy with ponds and eventually the reservoir.

14. Turn left across the bridge across the reservoir and continue until you come into Alexandra Park near the steps by which you left it. Turn right here and cross the stream, then go left and continue retracing your steps down the park and past the houses and the Water Works building. Stay on the right hand side of the park so you can come up out of the park where you came in, opposite the formal flower beds and before you reach the tennis courts.

15. When you get to the road, cross over and you'll see the steps which you came down on the way out. Don't go back up these, but turn left along the road until you come to number 101. Beside this house you'll see an unmarked twitten which goes (seriously) up through some woods. Go straight on up between houses and onto a road. Cross over and go along Linton Road which is opposite you.

16. Cross onto the lefthand side and look out for Linton Court (flats) on your left. Immediately after it there are steps down which lead to a path that winds down through a terraced park.
See story Linton Gardens and Jack-in-the-Green
Take the right fork and it will lead you to the entrance to the park where you turn left and at the junction near the railway bridge, turn right and you'll see the Royal Mail buildings with the footpath that leads back to the station forecourt.

Stories

Cinque Ports

England's defence depends on the south coast and, from Saxon times, the kings needed the support of the fishermen and boatbuilders who knew and worked in the waters of the English Channel. They were called on to repulse invaders.
Around 1050 Edward the Confessor regularised the arrangements by designating 5 (Cinque pronounced "sink" in English) ports whose obligations were to provide provisions, ships and men when the king needed them; to patrol and control the fisheries in the North Sea and to convey king and court overseas when required. In return these towns received various privileges: freedom from dues and tallies on goods going in and out; the right to keep salvage; the right to search other ships and virtual carte blanche at sea - legalised piracy really. There were also privileges at court during the Coronation and on other state occasions, when the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and the mayors of the towns play a ceremonial role. The original confederation of Cinque Ports comprised Hastings, Dover, Hythe, Romney and Sandwich. Winchelsea and Rye were affiliated later and called the Ancient Towns, and other "limbs" were added when necessary.
It's said that Hastings men took their rights seriously and were feared by fishermen from other regions. But they happened to be away fishing when William of Normandy invaded and Harold was so angry that he had houses burned in the town as punishment. Between the 13th and the 18th centuries Hastings men took part in many raids on the French coast, encouraged during war time and tolerated in peaceful periods. When the Royal Navy began to take control during the 18th century there were battles between their ships and the Hastings fleet because the local men had attacked foreign vessels without royal authority.
Between 1778 and the 1790s when the UK was at war with France, Spain, Holland, and the American Colonies, privateering became legitimate again and Hastings captains such as James Wenham were given letters of marque authorising them to attack enemy ships and take their cargoes. The Wenham family prospered during this period.
The Hastings fleet was also much involved with smuggling - tea, tobacco, wines, spirits, silks, linens came in, and when export duties were imposed, wool and leather were smuggled out.
By the early 19th century Revenue Cutters and Riding Officers were patrolling the coast and the seas. George England, for the Revenue, attempted to search Joseph Swain's boat as it beached in Hastings one early morning in 1821. Swain declared that he had no contraband, but the Customs officer said he would search the boat anyway. There was a struggle and Joseph Swain was shot dead. George England was arrested and tried for murder. He was found guilty, but pardoned, with disapproval from the local people. Joseph Swain is buried in All Saints churchyard.
Hastings also has a parallel history with other south coast towns from the late 18th century onwards when sea bathing and sea water cures became popular. It was a fashionable resort in 1815 but when the railway came the service from London took much longer than the trip to Brighton. Hastings prosperity waned until in the early years of the 20th century the town was suffering from economic depression. Unemployment was so severe here in the 1930s that the Fascists thought it would be a good recruiting ground. William Joyce (later Lord Haw Haw) and Oswald Moseley both came to meetings in the town, but there was always trouble with large numbers of anti-fascist, left wing folk ready to express their objections.

Willow story

This magnificent weeping willow is a good place to tell a story which honours Pales, the Roman goddess of plants, cattle and pastures. Her feast day was in late summer and everyone was expected to go to her temple to give thanks for her gifts and then to take a holiday and feast together. One year two fishermen who hadn't been having good catches decided to fish on Pales' feast day. Whether it was greed or need that motivated them the story doesn't say, but they stood by the river and fished.
Pales was a generous deity - giving the gifts of food for both animals and people, and the delights of the green of fields and flowers - but she also had a shadow side which was a fierce anger. When she saw these two fishermen disregarding her sacred day her rage was implacable, unforgiving. As those men stood by the riverside, they found that they could not move. Arms outstretched, they were rooted to the earth - literally. Their bodies became bark and branches, their roots reached down into the moist earth, their voices became the murmur of wind in their leaves. One became a willow and the other an alder, and there they stood, and stand still, by the running waters of the rivers of the world. Their leaves whisper in response to the croaking of frogs in the spring - some people say that the frogs are reminding them of their crime. Rooted to the earth, they have to listen and the willow branches hang low into the water as if the tree is weeping.

Alexandra Park

At the heart of this extensive park is a stream which once flowed out to sea in an estuary probably near where the Queen's Hotel is now. This may also be where the Roman harbour was. In the 19th century, with the coming of the railway and the growth of the town, folk became aware of the need to conserve the water supplies and the leaseholder of what was then a private garden offered the land to the Water Board. There was a fine water pump with a gas engine for many years where the houses are now. The stream was dammed to make the reservoir and the woodlands and ghylls around were included in the parkland.
It became very popular with bands regularly playing at the bandstand and other public entertainments and facilities. The spring which Dr McCabe declared to be healthy, iron-rich water added to the attractions. In 1878 Robert Marnock was employed to landscape the gardens which were opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1882 and renamed. (Before this they had been "St Andrew's Gardens".)

St Helen's Wood and Grey Owl

This land was preserved as a green space by the creation of the Park Preservation Trust in 1954 who bought it to save it from development. Isobel Blackman, a local woman whose family had long ago been charcoal burners but who were now prosperous builders' merchants, gave a good deal of money to the trust. She was the first woman to be given the freedom of the town in 1967, and her father was Baron of the Cinque Ports.
This parkland is one of the haunts of Archie Belaney, one of Hastings' more unusual citizens. This is his story. Archie Belaney, in 1937, initiated an unusual reversal of protocol during a command performance at Buckingham Palace. The convention was that for such a performance, audience and performers gathered and waited. Then a footman announced "their majesties the King and Queen", the doors were flung open and the royals made their entrance.
On this occasion there was just one performer and he requested that he be allowed to be the one to "make an entrance" and it was agreed. So it was that the royal family, including the young princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, waited. The announcement came: "Grey Owl, of the Ojibway Indians". The doors opened to reveal a proud, fierce-looking, brown-skinned, inscrutable-faced Native American in full fringed buckskin clothes. He did not bow to the royal family in the English manner, but instead gave the Ojibway salute - a raised right hand.
Grey Owl spoke about his native land, especially the forests and the creatures who lived there. He had tales of adventures with bears and lynxes, narrow escapes from death and snow blindness, and many instances of the hardships and comradeships of the wilderness life. He spoke about beavers, showing a great knowledge of their ways and environment and especially of their present plight - they were being over-hunted and their habitats destroyed. When he finished his talk, Princess Elizabeth jumped up and said,
"Oh do go on!" and so he continued for another ten minutes.
The royal family were moved and convinced by this performance. But it was a different matter for some members of the audience on the previous tour Grey Owl had made. He came to Hastings to give a similar talk to a packed house at the White Rock Pavilion. Mary McCormick was in that audience and when she came out she said to her friend,
"That was Archie Belaney, or I'll eat my hat!"
It was Archie Belaney. Mary McCormick had lived next door to him in St Mary's Terrace when they were children until they were both eighteen. She went on to tell her friend that Archie had been an unusual child; he'd spent most of his time up on the hills around the town and had kept a menagerie of frogs, mice, snakes and other creatures in the attic of the house he lived in with his grandmother and a maiden aunt. He sometimes took creatures to school in his pockets and all his life from very young, he'd been obsessed with Native American history and culture. To Mary as a child, he appeared to know everything there was to know about the Native people, especially of Canada.
It seems that around 1906, when he was 18, Archie Belaney went to Canada. Some people say he was sent by his family to learn farming; others that he'd seen Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show which was touring during that period and been inspired by that. In Canada, he became a trapper and hunter, and learned the Ojibway language. He traded in beaver skins. When asked, he said his father was Scottish and his mother Apache, and that he'd been adopted by the Ojibway tribe and this was the biography he presented for the rest of his life.
The film of Grey Owl's story shows him living with Anahareo, an Iroquois woman. The two of them adopted two beaver kittens orphaned when their parents had been killed by one of Grey Owl's traps. As Grey Owl lived with these two beavers which he called McGinnis and McGinty, he became aware of their intelligence, skill and beauty and his attitude to trapping changed. In his books Grey Owl writes of the sound a beaver makes when it has lost its mate - a call of heart-rending grief - and tells many tales of the cute and tricky behaviour of the beavers he reared by hand.
He realised that the beaver might be facing extinction in North America and he began to write about it and give talks. His first was to a Ladies Club in Metis-sur-Mer and he describes being very nervous. But his talk was fuelled by passionate commitment and first-hand knowledge and the ladies gave him $700 towards his work. He realised that he could make money this way - much more than by trapping - and he developed the aim of persuading the Canadian Government to set up National Parks to provide secure habitats for the beavers. By 1930 there were 2 parks and a government sponsored film of Grey Owl and his beavers.
Grey Owl continued his work for environmental protection and awareness, writing books and articles, and making lecture tours in North America and England - which included the 1937 command performance. He was a very popular speaker and people responded positively to his message. His biography suggests though, that he was never fully at ease with his dual identity: he married and deserted several women and children and by the time of his death, was known to have heavy drinking bouts.
Grey Owl, Archie Belaney, died in 1938 and though several people by then knew about his double identity, it wasn't until after his death that one of them, a Canadian journalist, broke the story in the "North Bay Nugget" paper. Grey Owl's cabin on Ajaawan Lake near Prince Albert National Park in Canada is a place of pilgrimage still for people who have been inspired and moved by his nature writing and his work in saving the beaver from extinction and making sure at least some part of its wilderness home survived. It was these Hastings hills that first inspired his love of the outdoor life on land and with its creatures.

Monkey Puzzle story

It's hard to see quite why there should be a monkey puzzle tree just here in St Helen's woods. Clearly, this is not a native species. The story of its arrival here goes back to the 18th century. At this time, plant hunting was part of the exploration of the world that was being undertaken by European mariners such as Captain Cook. Most of the expeditions had mixed motives of trade, piracy, exploration, colonization - and discovering new plants which might have medicinal qualities or be able to be grown for food or decoration back home.
Joseph Banks, botanist, went with Cook on the journey that reached Australia in 1770/71 - Botany Bay was named as a result of his activities. When he came back, Banks established Kew Gardens, with royal sponsorship, and set about collecting as many plants, living or dried, as he possibly could. Archibald Menzies was sent by Kew to the Americas in the 1780s after the War of Independence was over. Menzies was a dedicated plant hunter who involved the crew of his ship in helping him with his collecting so much that the captain eventually lost patience with him and confined him to quarters for the last 3 months of the voyage (around the coasts of South America).
But before this, Menzies attended a dinner with the Spanish Viceroy in Valparaiso, Chile at which dessert took the form of some large strange nuts that the botanist had not seen before. He secreted two of these at the table and later germinated them on the ship and grew them on. They were brought back to Kew and the species called Araucaria araucaria. They grew very slowly at Kew.
Meanwhile in Exeter first, then later in the Kings Road, London, the Veitch family of nurserymen were realising the commercial potential of exotic plants. They sent plant hunters all over the world and provided them with sufficient funds and support for long and successful journeying. William Lobb was one of Veitch's collectors who went to Brazil and Argentina in the 1840s. He led his expedition on foot over the Andes and into Chile where they headed south enjoying the milder climate. With some further travel along the coast by boat, they arrived at the mountains behind Concepcion. There Lobb found himself in forests of Araucaria trees, whose mature shape led to their Spanish name - paragua - umbrella. Lobb collected 3000 seed nuts and shipped them back to Veitch from Valparaiso.
By 1843 seedlings were on sale to the wealthy who bought them to adorn their parklands and to proclaim that they could afford them. It is said that a visitor to the Pencarrow Gardens in Cornwall saw one of the young trees growing and exclaimed:
"It would puzzle a monkey to climb up that!"
The remark was reported in the local press and the name stuck.

Old Roar

The ghyll (steep sided river valley) that gives the road here its name, still flows down through densely vegetated slopes into Alexandra Park where it is dammed to form the reservoir. When Hastings was first developing itself as a resort, Old Roar Ghyll appears in guidebooks as a mighty, roaring waterfall. Visitors expressed some disappointment, but it is said that the river does still roar and tumble over small falls when there has been heavy rain for a while.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Lizzie Siddall walked up here, before the newer houses were built and recorded that they carved their names on a rock within sight and sound of the falls. They, and others of the Pre-Raphaelite brethren, spent long periods in and around Hastings, appreciating its light and the variety and wildness of its landscapes.
The ghyll has a micro-climate that suits some kinds of plants very well. It is one of only two sites where toothwort grows in Sussex - the time to see this odd looking parasitic plant is in April/May.
There are many kinds of ferns growing on the steep banks of the stream - which would have delighted the Victorians of the Gothic Revival period of the 1850's. This was a time when all things gloomy were in fashion. This, combined with new techniques for making glass and glass plant houses (Wardian cases) and the reduced price of glass, led to a fashion for ferns - fern fever ensued. Country people could make the equivalent of six months' pay by delivering rare ferns to nurseries and collectors. There were fears that certain areas of Wales and the West Country would be denuded of their ferns, but although some became much rarer, it seems that no species was wiped out. In fact, because of the passion for the ferns in gardens and hothouses, they were greatly propagated.
Nonetheless, during this period there was a growing awareness of the need to conserve plants in their natural habitats. The Royal Horticultural Society which awarded prizes annually for the best collections of wild flowers, changed the competition to the best paintings of the plants and so joined the general move towards reducing the number of plants collected from the wild. The Gothic fashion faded, new plants were coming in constantly from abroad and fern fever cooled as quickly as it had arisen.
Some people say that one of the other reasons for the Victorians' fascination with ferns was that of all the plants, their sexual behaviour is least apparent. Linnaeus' classification of plants by the appearance and arrangements of their sex organs had caused a scandal but his system was catching on even though his language was considered indelicate. Ferns in fact propagate themselves in two very distinct stages with the sexual activity going on during the first stage where the organism is tiny and the sexual organs invisible to the naked eye.

Linton Gardens and Jack-in-the-Green

Linton Gardens was once a subscription garden but has since been given to the people of Hastings as a park. There is an active badger sett in the corner nearest the station.
These gardens are associated with May Day celebrations. During the 19th century there were at least 2 groups who organised processions at this season. Chimney sweeps - especially the boys, and milk-maids were the traditional participants - both low status occupations for whom an opportunity to make some extra money was very important. The processions usually included garlands of spring flowers and there was a competitive element to them. By the end of the 19th century there were fewer chimneysweep boys and the Victorians objection to drunken revelry resulted in the end of the tradition.
No-one is sure at what point the garlands became the Jack in the Green, but in the 1940's the May Day celebrations were revived and Jack came ashore at the Stade in a fishing boat. He was paraded along the seafront on a steam powered trolley attended by engineers who would be black from shovelling coal. On arrival at Linton Gardens there would be maypole dancing, the crowning of a May Queen, bands playing and general good times. There are photo's showing these events in Linton Gardens.
The tradition was lost again until 1983 when Mad Jack's Morris team revived it as a dance festival. It now happens at different sites in the town culminating in the castle on Bank Holiday Monday. The Jack is still attended by blackened, fierce "bogies" some of whom are still chimney sweeps. The occasion is a rich mixture of old and new, with hundreds of bikers arriving in town on the same day, but a family friendly atmosphere prevailing at the castle (albeit with a certain amount of seasonally appropriate lewdness and levity). Jack presides from a position high on the hilltop as the various Morris sides dance their stuff - wild Border teams and more intricate Cotswold sides plus local singers and drumming groups. Lots of people dress up, faces are painted green, there are giants and a huge "Black Sal" in the procession and at the climax of the afternoon, Jack is brought down to centre stage, surrounded by "bogies" and dancers, and destroyed! Leaves and flowers are flung to bystanders, enough for everyone to catch one, and so the spirit of summer is released for another year.
It's an exciting, colourful, highly individual festival - I recommend it.