Hastings Town Centre: This is why we have to keep the Arcade

Hastings town centre is rapidly in danger of becoming a dystopian waste-land.
Hastings Town Centre SUS-220130-114103001Hastings Town Centre SUS-220130-114103001
Hastings Town Centre SUS-220130-114103001

If fast-food delivery drivers, speeding through the pedestrian area in cars with blacked out windows, don’t mow you down, chances are you will be snarled at by one of the drug fuelled street drinkers who have become more a part of the Hastings town centre street furniture than the public benches the council ripped out in a bid to deter them.

Police patrols have been stepped up with the town centre ward being named as the worst place in Sussex for violent crime. It’s a sorry state of affairs.

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Speaking of the town centre, you would do well to even get there in one piece if you are a visitor parking at Rock-a-Nore or Carlisle Parade. People need to be blessed with a supernatural awareness and acute sense of balance to avoid an unscheduled trip to A&E.

Negotiating the seafront pavement near Pelham Crescent would give Indiana Jones a headache. It is a gauntlet of badly cracked and jaggedly raised paving stones, forming a dangerous trip-hazard that has been ignored for years. Embarrassingly, for Hastings Borough Council, the worst section is right outside their seafront headquarters.

They would, no doubt, be quick to point out it is East Sussex County Council’s problem not theirs. I would suggest they lean a little heavier on their county council cousins. It’s essentially re-laying a few paving stones, not rebuilding the pyramids.

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Not only is it putting people at risk, it creates a damning image and impression of our town, which is only reinforced when visitors traverse the underpass to emerge into the town centre proper.

People could be forgiven for a sense of nostalgia for when Welllington Place was, pre-pedestrianisation, the town’s bus hub, with a line of stops. At least buses didn’t mount the pavement.

Arguably, the one saving grace of a shabby and declining town centre area is the Queen’s Arcade. And yet even this iconic town centre treasure is in danger of being diminished with the butcher and Arcade Fisheries announcing they are pulling out.

Family run Arcade Fisheries is way older than I am, dating back to 1937. It has remained essentially unchanged since my memories of going there with grandmother as a small child in the mid 1960’s. She had a penchant for smoked haddock, a bright yellow fish which fascinated me back then. They still sell it.

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Queens Arcade, or Queens Avenue, as it is often called, has a distinguished history. It was opened in 1882, the same year as the Prince and Princess of Wales came to Hastings to open Alexandra Park, and the road outside the Arcade was renamed Queen’s Road.

It is also significant for the fact that Scottish pioneer John Logie-Baird - the inventor of television - conducted his early experiments in a workshop at Queens Arcade in 1924. The first ever television picture – an image of a Maltese cross, transmitted over a range of two or three yards, was first seen here. The cross is now in the possession of Hastings Museum.

There is still a bright glimmer of hope for the future of Queens Arcade, with a new specialist chocolate shop opening recently. James Bridger, who runs it, says the new owner of Queens Arcade is committed to keeping it going as a thriving shopping area. Let’s hope so, the town centre badly needs it.