Remembering when windmills overlooked the sea at Hastings

He writes: The West Hill’s last surviving pub The Plough, which reopened recently after several year’s closure, originally stood next to a big complex of windmills.

The Plough in Priory Road opened as a ‘beer house’ in 1835, becoming a fully licensed pub in 1854, supplying the thirsty mill-workers with refreshments.

The Plough is the building in the bottom right-hand corner of the 1851 map, pictured here with the three round buildings being the windmills.

At the top of the map is St Mary’s Terrace, with the Angel pub on the corner of what would then become Plynlimmon Road in the late 1870s.

The three mills can be seen in the painting of about 1850, with the Terrace on the left and Priory Road on the right.

Next to the right-hand mill is the chimney of a big steam-powered mill, built in the late 1840s, which had a large granary next to it.

There was a very unusual concentration of windmills here because the site was at the top of a long slope exposed to the prevailing south-westerly winds. There had been a windmill here since records began in the Middle Ages.

But this industrial estate of mills came to a sudden end in the 1874, when Hastings began expanding rapidly as a popular seaside resort.

Until then the area between Priory Road and Mount Pleasant Road had been agricultural land, but in April 1873 most of it was sold as building plots.

All three windmills and the steam mill had been demolished by December 1874, clearing the way for the building of Plynlimmon Road, Gordon Road and Alpine Road, plus the straightening of this part of Priory Road. There is now no indication that this area was once the site of these mills.

But there was another windmill on the West Hill, some of which has survived.

This was the hill’s fourth windmill, on the south-west corner of Croft Road and Priory Road.

It was built for Old Town baker John French in 1800, and the bottom of it is now part of Tower House.

There were many windmills in Victorian Hastings, with several more in the Ore area, including the one on Fairlight Down that burnt down in 1869 and was replaced by North’s Seat.

The last surviving windmill in the borough was Draper’s Mill, at Silverhill.

It was built in 1866 in Windmill Road, and was last used in 1941. It was eventually demolished in 1966 because of its poor condition.

There were once seven pubs in the West Hill area. The Plough is the remaining one.

Have you read: View pictures of the newly re-opened Plough on the West Hill

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