A. Burton, Esq., the Rev. W.W. Hume, Mr. S Putland, H. Harwood, Esq., H. Selmes, Esq., F.W. Staines, Esq. (a Hastings magistrate), Cooper Gardiner, Esq. (surgeon), Mr. R.F. Davis, W.P. Beecham, Esq. (of the legal profession), J. Gibbs, Esq., “Young St Leonards”, S.H. Beckles, Esq. (a barrister), “An Archeologist”, the “St Leonards Gazette” and others. And here, it may be added, while the circumstance is remembered, that at a casual meeting at the British Hotel of a few St. Leonards men and Mr. Growse the Hastings Town Clerk, the latter said that he knew that the Council has no case from the first, and he also knew that certain members had made up their minds not to listen to anything that he might say; he was their servant and must do their bidding. You have, said he, a possessing title, and that alone would have been sufficient if the case had been carried further. In justice to that gentleman it should be said that this opinion was drawn from him during a little jocularity; and, as may be supposed, after the Council has “ceased from troubling”; and the affair had been quietly buried. As regards a possessing title a few facts may be pertinent.
No Proof of Foreshore Rights
In 1851 a fisherman named Spice having obtained a freehold right to a rope-shop by undisturbed possession for a certain number of years, and its site being wanted by the Council for improvement, Spice declined to give it up, and dared anyone to remove it. He, probably, had been one of those who are different times in a long succession of years, contends that the beach did not properly belong to the Corporation, and on the strength of that contention, refused to pay rent. The Council finding they were powerless to remove the obnoxious rope-shop without purchase, gave Spice £40 for the ground and removed the building to another spot at the town’s expense. Spice first demanded £80. Mr. Ross having been in the Council at the time should have remembered this practical illustration of a possessory title when, six years later, he commenced to dispossess St. Leonards of a similarly acquired title. Also in the same year, 1851, Mr. Ross himself moved that the persons in Eversfield Place and Grand Parade who had placed seats on the parade (before Mr. Eversfield passed the parade over to the Council) be requested to remove them or else apply to the Council for permission to allow them to remain; or, said he, in the course of time, they would be able to claim the ground on which they stood as their freehold. And yet, with these conditions before him, Mr. Ross would not admit that a certain portion of St. Leonards, which included the said Eversfield Place and Grand Parade, with its undisturbed possession for over 20 years, had such a right, although for that period there had been no legal power either inside or outside of the Council which could have taken away that title. In Spice’s case respecting his rope-shop, Mr. Ross referred to the Elizabethan charter in which “all that our stonebeach” was given to the Corporation; but the Town Clerk (Mr. Shorter) said it was of no use to consult the Elizabethan charter, as there were no means of defining the limits of -
