Chapter 7: Victorian Alterations

Then, we come to changes made to the ground floor windows at the front of the house. Initially, these must have had standard, Georgian glazing bars, while inside them were sash shutters, as already explained. The first change that was made was to the shutters. At some point - perhaps as early as the late 1820s - a dark brown varnish was applied to the inside of these, on top of the light-coloured paint that survives intact on the outside. This varnish effect has been retained and is still visible. View image. However, this is partly because, some years later, the sash cords to the shutters were severed and the shutter cases sealed up. To this a precise date can be given, since, wrapped around one of the sash wheels to the shutters in the sitting room were pieces of the [T]elegr[aph] dated 6 and 12 March 1867.

Then a further change was made. At some point during the Victorian period the Regency glazing bars and panes of glass in the ground floor front windows were removed and replaced by single sheets of plate glass: this feature survived until replaced in 1991 and is evident in old photographs of the house. It is also evident from late Victorian photographs of the house that this was accompanied by the placing of semi-circular shades over the upper part of the windows on the outside, with a kind of cornice at the top. This is evident in photographs of the West Hill from the East Hill dating from the 1880s and 1890 view image.54

Hastings Old Town photographed from the East Hill, 1890

A further piece of newspaper was found stuffed in the surround to the study windows, from The People and dated 17 August 1890: on the face of it, this could be connected with this change, though it may be coincidental, since the plate glass windows were probably already in place by then, as the photographic evidence suggests (another piece of newspaper in the study shutter cases was from the Hastings and St Leonards Observer, dated 5 December 1959, so presumably draughts had to be excluded over a longer period!)

Work was also done during the Victorian period on the dining room window. As already noted, there is a cavity under this which evidently originally contained a pair of sash shutters like those at the front of the house. However, these were now done away with, evidently in conjunction with the provision of an elaborate metal structure for holding a blind, the remnants of which still survive (at the same time, the window surround was evidently also adapted). This change clearly took place at some indeterminate date during the Victorian period. View image.

In addition, the grates of the fireplaces both in the sitting room and the study were altered. Presumably these originally had Georgian grates, which must have seemed increasingly inefficient. That in the sitting room was replaced by a grate comprising a metal surround with panels decorated with an attractive Art Nouveau design, enclosing two flanking tiled panels, and a canopy to catch the smoke which displays a matching but more elaborate Art Nouveau design; it perhaps dates from c. 1900. View image. In the case of the study, an elaborate structure was built, protruding forward from the fireplace surround, made of patterned cast iron with ochre glazed tiles let into it. Inside is an elaborate structure of firebricks, evidently intended to project the heat from the fire forward into the room. Cast into this near the bottom are the words: ‘Roll Fire’ and near the top: ‘Pat. No. 2399/46’. It is apparent that it originally had a protruding grate and canopy, neither of which now survive. View image.

It should also be noted that the late Victorian photographs from the East Hill to the West Hill already noted show the extravagant extensions made to the chimneys to the house, presumably to improve the draught to the fireplaces below. These also appear in the pre-war watercolour of the rear of Exmouth Place by E. Leslie Badham. The exact date when these were made is unclear.

Watercolour of the rear of Exmouth Place by E. Leslie Badham (1873-1944)

54 For the dating of these, I am indebted to the late Ion Castro’s notes in the Hastings and St Leonards Observer, 9 March 2018: the 1880s date is based in the fact that the new lifeboat house built in 1882 is visible but that work on the St Leonards pier (which opened in 1890) has not yet been started; the 1890 photograph is so dated (and it shows the St Leonards pier).