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Opening of Baptist Church Wellington Square - Ruins of Ore Church - Tub Hole Store

Dorothy Louisa (Mrs. Soane), who died on the 17th of June, 1896 in her 88th year, and Mrs. Smith, a still surviving octogenarian.

The last-named lady, who through an accident became blind in childhood, has displayed a marvelous application of her other faculties. As long back as the year under consideration (1838) I had many opportunities of witnessing the dexterity with which she counted out any amount of change, and the facility with which she detected counterfeit coin. Then as to her needlework, both plain and fancy, the quantity that she has accomplished is simply incredible. Of curtains alone I have been told that she has knitted as many as a hundred pairs. In this particular usefulness, as well as in her general intelligence and activity for a woman of her years, deprived of sight, Mrs. Smith is quite an exceptional woman.

I have taken my readers a sort of excursion to Ore and Halton, returning to St. Leonards by way of Hastings; and if I have just glanced across the sea to the far-off land of New Zealand, which a considerable number of St. Leonards people have adopted as their new homes, I have done so by a process by no means strained. And now if they will permit me, I will take them a few miles in an opposite direction by a process equally natural. The head of the Daniel family having retired from business, spent his declining years with the partner of his joys and sorrows in quiet seclusion at the village of Bexhill. It was there that Mr. and Mrs. Daniel commenced a long and active life, and it was there, after prolonging the same at Hastings for forty or more years, closed it in peace, the husband in 1859 at the age of 73, and the wife in 1862, at the age of 84.

Just a week previous to the laying of the foundation stone of Halton church, the Rev. P. Saffery removed the venu (sic) of his ministrations from the Swan Assembly-room to the new chapel just then completed in Wellington square. A month later, namely, May the 8th, the formal opening sermon was preached by the Rev. Dr. Cox (author of the prize essay over which, as told in a foregoing chapter, Mr. Saffery and the present writer had some curious experiences), and the evening sermon by the Rev. Eustace Carey. Two days later, and again two months later, the four Episcopalian ministers of Hastings and St. Leonards issued an address against Sunday trading. The Rev. E. Auriol, a gentleman who having departed from this sublunary sphere, at a ripe age, afterwards was one whose signature was attached to the document, and the Rev. H. S. Widdrington was another. The other two names I purposely withhold, because I have something to relate from my own experience in connection with these names that may seem less inviduous (sic) by such omission, but which will, nevertheless, detract somewhat from the consistency of the undoubtedly well-meaning address thus put forth. One of the un-named clergymen used to make it his regular habit to call at the Post Office on Sunday afternoons during the only two hours in the day in which the window was closed to the public and when a notice was put up "This office will re-open after divine service”. The attendant would be thus disturbed by a loud knocking from his reading, or it might be from a short sleep which he was trying to steal from his 18 1/2 hours of Sunday duty but that did not matter; the public were importuned to abstain from trade labour on Sundays, and the hard-worked servants of the Post-office were summoned to labour for those who exclaimed against Sunday labour. The other unnamed clergyman received his letters by the postman on Sunday morning, but on religious grounds, declined to pay for them until Monday. There was no penny postage in those days, and the cost of a gentleman's letters sometimes amounted to three or four shillings. Yet while that clergyman deemed it sinful to pay money on Sundays, he did not object to receive it. He not only caused frequent collections to be made at his church, but he employed two vergers to stand at the church-doors to sell tickets for sittings at a shilling each. I can relate an amusing anecdote in connection with the last-named practice, which not improbably led to a different and more consistent arrangement. To put it briefly it was thus:- A gentleman wanted a sitting in the body of the church where there were no free seats, and on being told that the price was a shilling, he replied that his religious scruples forbade his paying money on Sunday; so, if the Rev. -- would kindly call for the money on Monday he would pay him, in like manner as the Rev. -- did the postman. This was a home thrust, and the moral is that our want of consistency sometimes arises from our not seeing ourselves as others see us.

Whilst I am still writing, two events have transpired, both of a relative character to this History which induces me to make an episodical (sic) break in its continuity. The first is a letter received from London concerning the ruins of Ore Church, and the second is the supposed discovery of a "tub hole," as described by a contemporary. It is pretty well known by those who lived in smuggling times that the ingenuity of the "freetraders" in landing and secreting their goods was almost without a parallel. We could, from our own knowledge, point to houses with artificial walls and ceilings, concealed cellars, stairs with movable risers, cavities in cultivated gardens, etc.; yet we are not disposed to give full credence to the recent "discovery of a tub-hole at the Fortune-of-War." It appears that the dilapidated and never-too-well-constructed inn of that name, which was frequented by soldiers during the 19 years' existence of the barracks at Halton, was about to be replaced by a larger and more substantial ​building​, and that in the process of construction a vault was found for which no other use could be attributed than that of depositing tubs of contraband spirits. Perhaps the following explanation will throw a new light on the subject. About 60 years ago, when High street was the great emporium, there were no fewer than five pastry-cooks and confectioners in that same street; namely, Wheeler, Newberry, Shaw, Austin and Payne. Shaw's establishment was that which is now numbered 71 or 72, whilst Payne's was that which is now Spencer's furniture and carpet warehouse (59). These being the two principal persons in that line of business they each of them had an ice-vault or ice-well, Shaw's being under the hill behind Croft field, and Payne's under the bank or ​road​ at the "Fortune of War." The innkeeper at that time was either Harvey (a milkman) or Stonestreet (a hairdresser) - most likely the former. Soon after that, when trade began to go westward, Mr. Payne removed to the Pelham Arcade, having a branch also at Grand parade; but, whether he kept on his ice-well at the Fortune-of-War I am unable to say. Of course it is not entirely out of the range of possibility for cubes of ice and kegs of brandy to have kept company in that same vault on occasions of emergency; but, that the supposed "tub-hole" at Halton was really as well as ostensibly an ice-well I have no manner of doubt. My contention, indeed, is supported by an action that was taken by the Corporation against Harvey, the landlord of the Fortune of War, and Payne, the occupier of the ice-vault for encroachment. This was in 1834 when at a meeting of the Corporation it was "Resolved that Messrs. Payne and Harvey (the defendants re Parker's Charity) having applied to be relieved of a part of costs sent into them, this court refuses to comply, and orders that the whole amount be paid forthwith." And now as to the correspondence respecting Ore church. Among the many assurances of personal interest which have been communicated to the Editor of the Gazette since this history was commenced, there probably has not been any one of more genuine sincerity than that which was contained in the letter received on the 8th of September, 1880. The following extract will show the earnestness of the writer.

I have been very much interested, and not a little amused, in the perusal of the papers

which I have received. They bring the good old times so vividly before my mind, that I almost seem to go over them again, even in their minutest details ... I had a good laugh over that Rev. somebody about his letters, and the gentleman with his religious scruples not paying for his seat in church on Sunday, but wishing the Reverend -- to call on him on Monday for the money. Oh! I say, what a bone was that for the inconsistent clergyman to pick! Ah! but when I think of the old church at Ore, and the state it now is in, I can but grieve from my inmost heart. I am obliged to confess that when I saw the dear old church for the first time in ruins - 'the home of my childhood so dear to me' - I felt as though I could have sat down on one of the graves and wept. This venerated ​building​ could easily have been restored, and even enlarged, if parties had so minded; and at a comparatively small cost could have been made comfortable. But now, in its hand-made ruins, it seems to say, 'Behold in me the capriciousness of man!' May God, in his mercy, grant that you and I, who have worshipped within its sacred walls, may be found citizens of that more adorable city

which is eternal in the heavens!

— London, Sept. 17th, 1880.

Mr. Benjamin Giles the writer of the above letter died fifteen years later, and curious as it may be - devout churchman as he was - he got chilled in a cold church when less warmly clad than usual, and died within a few days. He was born on Christmas Day, 1809, and died on April 23rd 1895; consequently in his 87th year.

The year 1838 is indeed still bristling with local events, a record of which should not be entirely devoid of interest. Among the occurrences of an accidental nature, not already enumerated, was a collision on the 27th of January at the foot of High street, between one of the Hastings and St. Leonards coaches and a brewer's dray. One might imagine that the latter's sturdiness and lower centre of gravity would have enabled it to come off best in the encounter but it was not so; for it was made to do duty as a battering-ram against Mr. Cork's drapery store, No. 58, the effect of which was to crash in the plate-glass window. This accident excited a good deal of curiosity, as, apart from the demolition of the shop-front, the existence of a plate-glass window in those days was of itself a novelty.

Three months later, on the 15th of April (a squally and snowy Easter Sunday), a workman at Mr. Rock's coach factory, named Mc Laughlen, incautiously bathed in the sea, and was drowned. In consequence of the non-rigidity of the body, a rumour was circulated that the man was not really dead, but in a trance; so that when Mr. Rock assembled his employees to assist in the funeral obsequies of their late fellow workman, he found the sensational rumour had gained so great a hold on the public as to induce him to postpone the interment until the ninth day after the event when decomposition having set in there was no longer room for the least doubt. It was certainly a curious circumstance that for a whole week the body retained its flexibility and had more the appearance of sleep than of death.

Miss Catherine Sayer - Literary Institutions - The Rev. W. Wallinger - Politics

I had bethought me now to turn from accidents and death-memorials to topics of a different character, but even to do that my reminiscences receive a new direction while I write by the death of a lady well known in Hastings and St. Leonards for her benevolence and philanthropy. Miss Mary Sayer, of Parade House, Hastings, died on the 21st of October, at the age of 79, and was followed to the Borough Cemetery by numerous relatives and friends to whom she was endeared. The deceased lady, in conjunction with her sister, founded the Girls' Industrial School on the West Hill, and contributed largely to the erection of the St. Andrew's and Emmanuel Churches. She was a daughter of the late Mr. Henry Jenkinson Sayer, -