Dust Destructor - Hastings was a pioneer in waste-burning

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The government has come under much pressure recently about the pollution being produced by the burning of refuse at recycling centres.

But Hastings Council was a pioneer in waste-burning, having built one of the country’s first such facilities at Rock-a-Nore in 1889.

In Victorian times there were two types of refuse: ash and dust. Back then, most people heated their properties with fires of coal and/or wood. In addition, these fires were also commonly used to burn as much refuse as possible, so almost every person regularly produced ash from the one or more fires they had.

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The ash would be put in bins and could be used in many ways. But other refuse that was not ash was known as dust, and had to be disposed of in some way. It would be put into dust-bins and collected by council-owned dust-carts, but much of it was thrown into the sea.

Smoothing the cliffs in 1911 above the Dust Destructor at Rock-a-Nore. Pic: ContributedSmoothing the cliffs in 1911 above the Dust Destructor at Rock-a-Nore. Pic: Contributed
Smoothing the cliffs in 1911 above the Dust Destructor at Rock-a-Nore. Pic: Contributed

By the mid-1880s, however, the ways of disposing of the dust were being becoming a big social and health problem, so Hastings Council decided to build what became known as the Dust Destructor at Rock-a-Nore. This

had high-powered furnaces that could destroy by fire anything burnable, and melt down most metals, using the heat thereby generated for various purposes.

Rock-a-Nore was a small headland until the 1830s. Then the town’s first groynes were built there, and by the late 1840s the shingle that quickly accumulated against them had created a new piece of ground that the Council decided to use in a variety of ways. During the late Victorian years the Dust Destructor, a sewage works, a mortuary, an artillery battery, an engineering workshop, large stables, a lifeboat house, a military drill hall, an ice-making factory, several boat-builders and a tan house were all built there.

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The sewage works were built in 1866-68 as part of a big new drainage system for Hastings. A 1.5 million gallon tank was built at the east end of the new ground. It still exists today, underneath the boat yard and car park, and is still used. In 1870 the Hastings Sewage Manure Works was built where the boat yard clubhouse is now. This tried to turn the town’s sewage into manure, but was unsuccessful, and closed in 1874.

The site in the late 1930s. Pic: ContributedThe site in the late 1930s. Pic: Contributed
The site in the late 1930s. Pic: Contributed

In the late 1880s the Dust Destructor was built on top of, and next to, the sewage tank, and immediately adjoining the 1870 sewage manure building. Until then the town’s rubbish had been dumped in many places, with some burnt on the beach near the end groyne, but from 1889 all the borough’s sewage and rubbish ended up at Rock-a-Nore.

The Destructor had four furnaces, which could each burn 9-10 tons of rubbish a day. The hot gases from here went through two cremators, then to two 30hp boilers, and then to a 130 feet high chimney. The steam generated in the boilers drove an engine that raised all the salt water used in the borough for street cleansing, sewer flushing, etc. It drove a steam-powered stone-breaking machine to create road stone, and from 1902 it powered the water-operated new East Hill Lift. The location of the Dust Destructor was popular site with the public, as it was at the north-east end of the town and the prevailing south-westerly winds blew the polluting smoke far away.

The Destructor also fed steam into the Council’s ‘Disinfecting Station’, and operated both a mortar mill and a plant which produced manure from the fishmeal from the fishmarket. But by the late-1930s the Destructor’s machinery was over 40 years old and was worn out and inefficient, so it closed in 1937 when the tipping site at Pebsham opened, and it was demolished in 1951.

Its site is still visible, and sometimes on the beach below the end groyne at Rock-a-Nore one can see a sort-of concrete, made up mostly of metal slag from the furnaces.

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