Chapter 4: Early modifications

Perhaps the most significant early change was the construction of Exmouth Cottage in immediate juxtaposition to Exmouth House, which evidently took place within two or three years of the construction of Exmouth House itself and not later than 1822. Thomas Brandon Brett in his ‘Rhymed Reminiscences of Hastings’ dates Exmouth Cottage as ‘between Eighteen twenty and twenty-two’, and the Cottage had clearly been built by 23 December 1822, since in ‘A Scale for An Assessment for the necessary Relief of the Poor’ of that date, Matthew Fagg was assessed not only for Exmouth House but also Exmouth Cottage (valued at £14.80, as against £22.00 for Exmouth House).26 As to how much earlier, the fact that Fagg had paid only 17s in the rate assessment dated 27 June 1822 might well imply that Exmouth Cottage was not yet completed at that point, since this is a similar figure to the 16s that he paid for Exmouth House alone in December 1819.27 It is also worth noting that, in the list of lodging houses in Powell’s Hastings Guide, to which we will come in the next chapter, Exmouth Cottage fails to appear in the second edition, although Exmouth House does, implying a date for that edition of 1819 or 1820; Exmouth Cottage is added to the third edition, which also lacks a date but must date from a couple of years later, since the fourth edition, which finally is dated, was published in 1825.28

It has already been explained how the site of Exmouth House was evidently carefully ‘finished’ at the outset, including a garden wall extending from the house back to the bricked-up cliff face at the rear. What is strange is that, as is still apparent, this garden wall, including its brick coping, was simply incorporated into the structure of Exmouth Cottage. View image. That Exmouth Cottage was built more economically than Exmouth House is also suggested by the extreme tightness of the fit of the front door: when the stucco was removed in 2012, it became apparent that the door is built right up to the boundary wall with Exmouth House. View image. In addition, Exmouth Cottage has a quite different profile from Exmouth House, with a second storey comprising two rooms under a steep mansard roof. Also perhaps relevant is the fact that, in contrast to the treatment of the cliff face at Exmouth House, in the case of Exmouth Cottage this was not bricked up, and the original sandstone is still visible. View image. Had Fagg had his fingers burned by the massive cost of building Exmouth House, and did he try to build its companion as cheaply as possible, making economies wherever he could?

Here, it is worth adding Brett’s account of the site:

And now gentle reader permission I beg / To tell of another house built for M. Fagg, / ‘Tis called Exmouth Cottage, and was, I think new / between Eighteen-twenty and ‘Twenty-and-two. / It took a large slice, its dimensions to fill / Where, I as a boy, used to slide down the Hill / ‘Twas better, one thought, than to slide not at all, / to slide half way down to the fence and the wall; / So I and companions still made it our brag, / We still were unbeaten by usurper Fagg.

It is perhaps worth noting that Brett goes on:

Though Fagg may still claim, in the year ‘Thirty-nine / Ex-mouth-ly, “This House & this Cottage are mine,” / Yet comes there a time when the two he will give / to Deudney and wife, when he ceases to live.

Might one note a slight tone of disdain in Brett’s account of Fagg (whose death in 1839 he here correctly records)? The same page of his verse chronicle also tells how, prior to the construction of the houses further up the hill from Exmouth Cottage, the ground was used for drying washing. Indeed, he recounted a youthful April Fool’s joke on his part -- he told the maids responsible that the clothing line had broken and that the washing was getting soiled, leading them to dash up the hill in an unnecessary attempt to rescue it -- which resulted in his having his head clouted. In addition, Brett retails details of the subsequent owners of Exmouth Cottage, which I will ignore here: it is perhaps worth noting that, when I examined the deeds of Exmouth Cottage on 21 June 2014, they did not appear to include any documentation concerning the purchase of the plot of land on which the house is built. The earliest document is a Deudney-Piper conveyance dated 1853, accompanied by a multi-page abstract of the history of the property going back through 1817 to 1811, in other words summarising the history of Exmouth House as explicated by its earliest deeds.

26 Brett., ‘Rhyming Reminiscences’; East Sussex Record Office PAR 367/30/2/16, fols. 9v-10.

27 PAR 367/8/19, p. 13; PAR 367/8/18, p. 14.

28 P.M. Powell, Hastings Guide (2nd edn., ?1819-20; a further dating clue is provided by the map of the environs of the town facing p. 89, which is dated 1819), p. 79; 3rd edn. (n.d.), pp. 81-2, for the addition of Exmouth Cottage (with two sitting rooms and five beds) (a copy of this edition is available at the History House, Hastings). The 4th edition of 1825 is available on Google Books; the relevant passage there is on p. 83.