Sometimes it does a soul good to get away from the built-up spaces of a city — even a city with a wide and sweeping, ever-changing tidal river like the Thames — and head out to the coast and walk on a beach for a few hours. Such was the reasoning behind last week's visit to Bexhill and Hastings for a belated birthday trip with my mum (last year we went to Margate and Broadstairs for her birthday), although, ironically, we seemed to spend most of the time exploring interesting urban corners, rather than the beaches themselves.
The main reason to visit Bexhill is the De La Warr Pavilion, the modernist icon built in 1935 by Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff. It's a lovely building; light and airy, even on a cloudy day, with a small but decent gallery space (currently showing a Joseph Beuys exhibition, on until September 27), and a nice comfortable-looking cafe (that we didn't actually try, as we'd brought a picnic lunch). The restoration has been done with a great attention to detail, making it feel simultaneously classically art deco and instantly contemporary — as all the best modernist spaces are. Like many seaside buildings, it sometimes feels like being on a boat — albeit a landlocked one — with its long balconies and a huge open sun deck.
There are some funny little temple-like seaside shelters in front of it, almost arcadian-looking. They seemed to be from an earlier time, but somehow don't clash at all with the Pavilion.
The same can't really be said for the eccentric terraces of houses nearby along the Marina, which are a wonderfully bizarre architectural mish-mash of Moorish minarets and classical English staidness. One terrace is clearly wealthier than the other, with a row of gardens facing the sea — this struck us as optimistic as we walked headfirst into a strong wind; especially the one with the overly manicured lawn. The other terrace is more rundown, and a quick peer into their courtyard showed lots of peeling paint and crumbling walls. There are also other different features between the two terraces, like the bay windows and mullions on the wealthier houses, and the social club and abandoned businesses on the poorer side.1
We caught a bus from Bexhill to St Leonard's, which had a rather bizarre array of bus posters of featuring poems about dogs, written by schoolgirls. One in particular really caught our attention:
Is that an urn with the dog's ashes in or what?
Notable things to glimpse from the bus were a cafe called The Coffee Pot with a badly-painted sign of a floating tablecloth on the gable wall, a gatepost painted to look like Toad of Toad Hall and, down on the seafront, a statue of two people either grappling or making love — the bus went by quickly, so it was hard to tell. We got off outside Marine Court, another example of 1930s seaside modernism that looks a bit like a boat. In this case, it looms like an ocean liner on the skyline, which comes as no surprise because it was actually modelled on that grand dame of ocean-liners, the Queen Mary, back when she was a young lady (as it were).
It's certainly a rather striking building, perhaps best observed from a bit of a distance (e.g. across the road), but when seen from the Hastings end you'll find it has a weird sense of perspective, where the bottom half veers away into the distance and the top half looms towards you. Beneath it is a rather sad and tawdry row of neglected shops that makes one almost long for the days when it must have been the height of glamour, especially when one considers that the kind of regeneration a place like that would get these days is to fill it with chains like Costa Coffee and Tesco Express, which would do the building no favours at all.
We wandered along the seafront and stopping to admire some lovely shelters and the Hastings weather station, which has some great cartoon illustrations on the barometer [click here to see all of them together in their full-size glory]
Hastings does have a pier, but it's currently closed to the public, awaiting restoration, so we veered off from the seafront and took to exploring some of Hastings' side streets, where we discovered a corner that could easily have been Manhattan in the early 1980s.
This insalubrious corner is in fact right next to Hastings Public Library, housed in the Brassey Institute, opened in in 1881 as a reference library by local MP Thomas Brassey. It's a rather nice example of High Victorian Arts and Crafts Gothic, although also in need of a bit of care. It would be great to see these wall frescoes restored to their full glory. (And I still don't know who Walter was; does anyone else know?) Close nearby is a rather odd-looking church and a truly hideous drinking-fountain. Also some shops and cafes, some of which still have some original features of the earlier businesses, liked curved windows and painted ceilings, which are rather nice.
On first glance, the centre of Hastings seems to have no character, being full of the same high street shops and chuggers as every town centre, but a little attention rewards you with a lot of interesting details.
Hastings Old Town has much more obvious character. We managed to arrive just in time to catch the last cliff train up West Hill (whoooosh!) to have a look at Hastings Castle, although it seemed to be closed, so we walked back down the hill and headed off to look at the fishing boats and drying houses at Rock-A-Nore.
This was the only part of Hastings that I remembered from our previous trip there when I was seven years old, and it didn't seem to have changed too much, except for the addition of a museum. That's all set to change very soon, though, with a couple of new developments going up: a new hotel building which looks intrusively out of place in the location, judging by the projected images on the hoardings (sorry no pics, I forgot to take one); and the rather more locally infamous Jerwood Project, which is the subject of quite a lot of local dissent. (It's unfortunate that the campaign website is so ugly it's not going to win over any of the design-conscious arty types that the Jerwood tends to collect, because some of their arguments are actually worth a look, especially the one that points out that they're not saying no to it all together, just in that specific location.) The location is, of course, currently home to the local fishing industry, and while it could be argued that it's not just Labour policy that's killing it (despite how the locals might feel), there's going to be a lot of bad feeling about any development which doesn't take that into consideration. (I'm curious what some of the architecture bloggers have to say about it, Owen in particular.)
For the time being it's a perfect photographic playground for someone like me, full of intriguing corners and a rich patina of weathering and grime. My camera battery was dying by that point, so it was a simple case of pointing and clicking instead of taking the time to focus on small details, but I managed to get a few wide shots that give a good idea of the atmosphere.
pic of Rock-A-Nore
Fish-and-chips by the sea is an essential part of the experience, so we headed off to the Blue Dolphin, as recommended by my friend Fiona, and excellent fish and chips they were too. It's easy to see why they're regularly touted as the best in town.
Then a stroll up the High Street for some window shopping (I remembered my phone has a camera that'll do in a pinch), where I discovered one shop selling furniture covered in Marvel comics, like this fantastic Fantastic Four one:
And finally, a horribly rain-sodden dash to the station to catch our train back to London, where I tried not to let the fact that I was forced to sit in sopping wet jeans ruin a lovely day (they were so wet, I left a puddle in the waiting room!). Hopefully it won't take me so long between visits next time.
More photos and anecdotes here.
