Down From London: Local Secrets, Honest Stories & the Real Hastings
The boats are on the beach because the harbour was never finished, and that tells you most of what you need to know.
Thirty odd boats on the register, maybe ten that still go out, none longer than ten metres, pushed down the shingle by tractors before it is light and hauled back up when they are done. It is what's left of the biggest beach launched fleet in Europe and it works off a strip of stones in front of tall black net shops that have been on that strip since the 1830s. I walked past it for the best part of a year thinking it was a heritage display. It is a workplace. Pat, seventy four, born on All Saints Street, put me right on that and on most other things.
I moved from Walthamstow in June 2022 and bought a flat between Norman Road and Warrior Square at what turned out to be the top of the market. I am a DFL. I know what that means here and I know what it did to prices. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. It is what a town that had every reason to ignore me told me anyway, once I stopped turning up only in August.
What's in it
Reading the Stade. What the tractors are doing at half six, which family is which by the boat, why the net shops are tall (not for drying nets), the under ten metre quota problem in plain words, the Fishermen's Museum, and how to buy fish off the huts without embarrassing yourself.
Two ends, one town, sort of. The Old Town and St Leonards, why each thinks the other has it wrong, Burton's 1826 plan, Marine Court, Warrior Square, Norman Road and Kings Road, and the honest version of what people like me did to the price of a flat.
Bottle Alley and the front. The 480 metre walk under the prom, the glass in the walls, the shelters and who sits in them, Pelham Crescent and the work above St Mary in the Castle, and the pier told straight: the lottery money, the sale, the four million asking price, the court order, the empty units.
Bonfire and Hastings Week. The 17 October procession, lit from the East Hill beacon and ending on the beach at Pelham Place, where to stand, what the programme is for, the week around the 14 October anniversary, and why you do not ask a bonfire society what time the fireworks are.
The chippy question. Maggie's, Blue Dolphin, the Mermaid, the Cod Father, Kingfisher, Blue Fish, Hollington, the Lighthouse. Who says what, why Rock-a-Nore thinks it has won, and the people who say buy it off the hut and go home.
Deprivation, honestly. Third most deprived council area in England on the 2025 figures, eighteen neighbourhoods in the worst tenth, what that looks like on the ground, street by street, and why it is not a St Leonards seafront problem, the draft Local Plan's 700 homes a year, and what a newcomer owes a town like this.
The Old Town year. Jack in the Green, Carnival Week, Pirate Day, the Seafood and Wine weekend and this year's row over fenced off benches, Coastal Currents in September, the Duke of Wellington coming back, and which pubs are for locals on a Tuesday.
Getting here and getting about. Warrior Square versus Hastings station for London, the East Hill lift (steepest in the country), the castle works, and where to leave a car on Bonfire night (nowhere near it).
February. What the town is like when it is only yours: the fleet in bad weather, the empty prom, the light off the sea at four o'clock, and why Pat says this is the only month that counts.
How it works
Instant download, opens on a phone, tablet or laptop, roughly sixty pages. Hastings does not stand still, the pier alone changes hands every time you look, so when a pub reopens, a chippy shuts or a bonfire date moves I rewrite the relevant bit and send the new version to everyone who has already bought it. Free, for life.
Who this is for
People who left Hastings and still check the fishing beach webcam. People who grew up in the Old Town and are watching it change. Anyone thinking of moving down who wants the true version before the estate agent's one. And anyone who has stood on the Stade at half six wondering what on earth the tractors are for.
Pat says turn up in February. Then we'll talk.
Download it now, free updates for life
Instant download. Any device. Written under the pen name Natalie Monroe.