Chapter 7: Victorian Alterations

Lastly, we need to deal with an alteration to the curtilage of the property which is well-documented and exactly dated. This is the rebuilding of the north-eastern end of the front terrace, and of the adjacent steps down to the street, which took place in 1898 in order to widen the public pathway between Exmouth House and the curtilage of West Hill Villa. Among the deeds for the house is a record of a conveyance dated 4 June 1898 by Mrs Willdey, the then owner, of a piece of land for £20 to the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of the Borough of Hastings to enable the construction of a flight of steps north of Exmouth House (though the actual deed, which evidently incorporated a plan, is no longer present). It was evidently part of a programme of improving municipal footpaths throughout the Borough of Hastings at that time, of which the results are in evidence throughout the Old Town and beyond (for instance, the steps from Hill Street down to George Street, or ‘Tressell’s Steps’ from St Mary’s Terrace down via Milward Road to Queen’s Road).

In the case of Exmouth House, this must have entailed taking down the end of the terrace and rebuilding it on a new alignment. The earlier state of affairs is apparent from the plan of the property that appears on the 1853 deed of purchase that has already been referred to. View image. This shows the path beside the house coming down the hill to the entrance to the rear garden of the house as at present, continuing from there to the front corner of the house. At that point the terrace to the house formerly came out in line with the side wall of the house, forming a regular rectangle, and the footpath turned at a slight angle towards the street, at just four foot (1.2 metres) in width. There then appears to have been a shared set of steps both for the path and for the house, which diverged part of the way down so that the lower steps to the house turned southwards to follow the front of the terrace, as at present, whereas the lower steps from the public footpath were splayed in an easterly direction. What appears to have happened is that both the lower part of the curtilage of West Hill Villa and the terrace of Exmouth House were rebuilt to allow the public footpath to become a full six foot (1.8 metres) wide, using engineering bricks which are quite distinct from those of the original terrace and of the garden wall to West Hill Villa. (In the case of West Hill Villa, the boundary wall was reconstructed up to the gate to its garden.) In front of the house, a new set of steps was constructed for the public footpath to descend into Exmouth Place, taking up part of the former area of the terrace, the end of which must have been demolished and reconstructed to make way for them. Though the original York stones, railings and gate were re-used and are still extant, the flagstones towards the end of the terrace must have been cut and reset and the railings reinstated on a different alignment in conjunction with the construction of the new steps from the terrace to the street. The work differed in various respects from what had preceded it. For one thing, the railings are set in a concrete slab, rather than in York stone as elsewhere on the terrace. Also, the steps are formed of slabs of a pink-coloured composite stone supported on bricks: this gives quite a neat effect, but one suspects that the original steps were stone slabs, as is still the case with the steps to Exmouth Cottage.