Chapter 5: Fashionable heyday

Following Matthew Fagg’s death in 1839, we enter quite a lengthy period when the ownership of the house was the subject of complex negotiations. Ownership of it passed, with the rest of Fagg’s estate, to his daughter, Eliza, and her husband, Charles Deudney, described as a merchant of St Leonards. Deudney was indeed primarily a coal merchant and ship-owner (most likely delivering coals to St. Leonards beach) in partnership with his younger brother, Robert. In addition, Deudney was one of the St. Leonards Commissioners, so was well connected in the circles of the day. Moreover, for a short period in 1838, Charles was in partnership running the White Rock Brewery with one John Fagg, who could have been the son of this name mentioned in Matthew Fagg’s will.43 Eliza had married Deudney in November 1827 at All Saints Church, Hastings and the couple may well have run the Marine Hotel in Pelham Place, described as ‘Deudney’s’ in the Hastings and Cinque Port Iris in 1830-1.44

On 17 December 1842 Deudney sold marshland at Lydd formerly owned by Fagg to Sotherton Branthwayt Peckham Micklethwaite, Baronet, of Iridge Place, Salehurst, for £3,320, and by a covenant dated 24 April 1843, confirmed by a settlement of 4 May 1844, the remaining estate was conveyed to James Rolfe and Thomas Arcoll of Fairlight in trust for the benefit of Mrs Deudney. At this point the estate comprised, in addition to marshland at Lydd, three properties: 57 George Street, Hastings (occupied by the well-known artist, Samuel Prout), and Exmouth Cottage and Exmouth House. The two latter are specifically described as let as lodging houses. Then, on 6 May 1844, Mr and Mrs Deudney and their trustees mortgaged Exmouth House and its furniture to Christopher Thorpe of Fairlight, gentleman, for £500. Charles Deudney died on 16 December 1844, and on 16 August 1845 Mrs Deudney and her husband’s executor, Harry Hurst, mortgaged Exmouth House and other property to Robert Young of Battle, gentleman, and Mary Jenner of Ashburnham, widow, for £417 and £726 respectively. Then, on 1 November 1847 a further charge of £300 was made to Newton Parkes of St Leonard’s, butcher. Thorpe’s solicitors, Scrivens and Young of Hastings, served notice demanding repayment of the principal sum on 4 June 1852 and the property was auctioned at the Swan Hotel, Hastings, on 6 December 1852, being sold to Samuel Gutsell of Hastings, grocer, for £900. This was ratified by a conveyance dated 14 February 1853, which included an undertaking by Eliza Ann Deudney and others to obtain a discharge of Exmouth House from a mortgage that had been taken out on 26 September 1825, the liability on which had been charged by Fagg’s will on his real estate.45

Throughout the entire course of this complicated series of transactions, Exmouth House was evidently being rented out. In the notice of 4 June 1852 Mrs Deudney is described as ‘of St Leonards on Sea’, and, as already noted, both Exmouth House and Exmouth Cottage are described in the covenant dated 24 April 1843 as let as lodging houses. So who was actually living there? Unfortunately, as during Matthew Fagg’s lifetime, evidence from directories is initially patchy, though it improves from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, as we will see. Brett, too, is unfortunately initially unhelpful, simply recording the Deudneys as owners (though mentioning, incidentally, that Mrs Deudney died in 1875 - long after her association with the house had ceased).46

43 This partnership was dissolved in August of that same year: see The Globe, 25 Aug. 1838 (pg. 4 col. 1). Other information on Deudney kindly provided by Roy Palmer.

44 David Renno, History on the Walls of Old Town Hastings: Commemorative Plaques and Tablets (Hastings, 2011), gives the information about the marriage in his description of Exmouth House on p. 21. He also states that Mr and Mrs Deudney moved into the house, but in view of the evidence cited in the text I suspect that this is a false surmise on his part.

45 From documents associated with the deeds for Exmouth House, it appears that this mortgage related to 57 George Street and may have been taken out when that property was purchased, but there seems to have been some doubt as to whether it also extended to Fagg’s other properties in Hastings, including Exmouth House, so hence the long paper-trail relating to it.

46 The relevant passage of Brett’s verse is as follows (it follows the couplet about the house being built to a draughtman’s design quoted in the text in connection with Matthew Fagg):

Now two years we’ll add, and when they shall have flown, / A Mister Charles Deudney will call it his own,/ For five or six years, when his own widowed spouse / Will take the possession of said Exmouth House. / In ‘Sev’nty-and-five, at the age sev’nty-one,/ Eliza Ann Deudney’s career will have run;

The verses then go on to Gutsell, as quoted in chapter 6 of the text, below.