Remembering lost Hastings pubs

If you like beer it's a win-win as you get to try something new as well as supporting local pubs and businesses who are still getting back on their feet following the pandemic.

It's also perhaps a good way, to find a pub you haven't discovered yet.

Many people stick to a local pub or just a handful of favourites, but a fascination with pubs led me on a mission to visit and tick off every pub and bar in Hastings and St Leonards. I did this in the summer holiday between leaving school and starting college in 1979. I accomplished the mission visiting (as I remember) 92 pubs, including hotel bars.

Some become firm favourites, others I have rarely set foot in, in the 40 plus years that followed. But what really hits home is the number of those pubs that no longer exist.

Of that number, I worked out that 31 of the pubs I visited back then, no longer exist – that’s more than a third. All that history and social culture vanished.

I am aware that nothing stays the same and that things change, but still, I can’t shake of the feeling that this is an erosion, a loss of an important part of the fabric of the town that is lost forever.For sure there has been a revival - pubs opening to redress the imbalance, but not enough to make a dent on that 30 percent loss - a third of our watering holes and locals vanished.Some will say it was market forces - use it or lose it, but I feel that many of these remarkable, imposing structures, were lost to property speculation. Many of these pubs stood unchanged for decades. Now we are living in a time of evaporating history.

Looking back, we lost some real treasures in that list. Pubs like the the Marina, a tiny street corner local in an undercliff backstreet running parallel with the main St Leonards seafront road. It had charm and atmosphere and was known for its quirky sign of a mermaid sitting on a seafront bench, next to a suited and bowler-hatted businessman.

Some areas have been literally decimated in terms of lost watering holes. On the West Hill, only the Plough remains open from the seven pubs that once existed in the area.

It’s a similar story in Ore, with only the Old King John left standing. The Elphinstone area lost both of its pubs with the Elphinstone Arms and Beaconsfield Arms now gone.

Hopefully the tide seems to be turning with new pubs and bars, such as The Seadog, in Hastings town centre opening, and the return of once lost pub The Jolly Fisherman, in the Old Town. but I still feel the loss of thos vanished watering holes.

Have you read? Who remembers the Penny farthing pub in Hastings?