Greetings from Hastings

Our house is the one with the blue wall peeping over the rooftops

It's just over a month since we moved to our Shoebox in Hastings from la France profonde.  It has been a double culture shock, coping first with the return to the UK after seven years abroad, and then with a move to Hastings in East Sussex, a town we had little knowledge of.  "Why Hastings?" people ask us constantly.  The answer is, as so often: happenstance.  We found a house that clicked with us at the right time, and the decision was made.

After living for seven years in a spacious town house in the centre of a small French town, we have moved to one that has 40% of the previous space, with two small rooms on each of four floors.  This is taking a little getting used to.  "Why did you do it?" I hear you ask.  The upside, gentle reader, is the view and the light.  After seven years of looking out on the central square of Ribérac, which is essentially a car park with a public lavatory on one side, we now look out to the northwest over the jumbled roofs of Hastings Old Town and the Regency houses on the hillside opposite, and to the southwest over the neighbours rooftops to the sea.  Lots of people mention the social problems of Hastings, but few mention the superb architecture of the Old Town or - the greatest surprise to a newcomer - the glittering light. 

Hastings is a curious amalgam of hairy folksingers; refugees from London - known as DFLs (Down from London); local fishermen; immigrants who have found their way here by chance; retirees and - almost, it appears, a small minority - the usual population of a British seaside town who quietly mind their business and try to earn a living.  The town itself is equally curious, with three distinct elements along the seashore.  The Old Town in the east nestles between East Hill and West Hill.  Beyond West Hill is the town centre - a featureless shopping centre just behind the front.  And to the west of this lies Saint Leonard's, the historic core of which is the group of streets established by Decimus Burton in the first part of the nineteenth century as a fashionable seaside resort.  Behind this sequence the land rises sharply, with layers of terraced houses or subsequent developments, terminating in what is known appropriately as The Ridge, a sort of ring road running along the crest of the highest hill to the north.

More to follow, shortly!

Antony Mair