The Sights and Smells of Hastings (and other towns)

[Derek Jempson]

Walk down any street in the town and your nostrils will be assailed by any number of nasty niffs. It's becoming an ever increasing problem. There are certain areas in Hastings where there is an awful sewer/drain smell. Those smells probably emanate from cracked or blocked drains or broken manhole covers. Additionally, all of our streets are now lined with ranks of wheelie bins containing festering rubbish that smell, well... rank! These of course are emptied fortnightly and some of them smell really bad by collection day as evinced by the swarms of flies that bad smells attract (or is it the other way round?). Oh for the good old days of not so long ago, when dustbins were emptied weekly and were kept at the rear of houses, out of sight and out of nasal range! Add to those problems, the mushrooming of bins provided for dog mess and you have a recipe for urban olfactory nastiness. Our Edwardian ancestors would be disgusted, but perhaps not the early Georgians, who were a filthy lot!

[moonjiver]

I suppose that the wheelie bin represents an attempt to control the general outpouring of rubbish, but surely the wheelie bin is one of the ugliest of man's inventions - was there not some other way? What would be better is to educate people not to waste and thow out so much stuff in the first place. And stop supermarkets packaging everything in several layers and a carrier bag to finish.

What I do find depressing at the end of a day is wading home through a sea of litter, dirt, hundreds of discarded chewing gums etc. all over the pavements of London Road, St Leonard's. There is an ever-prevalent stink. The last time I was in France, the streets were spotless and flowers grew in the centre of the road!

[Richard]

Awful sewer/drain smells.

'George Street' in the Old Town is the worst offender that I know of, probably because of the narrow street with poor ventilation using 'venting' plates with grilles to make matters worse..
This is the place to experience the strongest 'pong' in Town as far as I am aware of and of course the warm weather makes it worse.
Perhaps there is a council or southern water authority telephone number, for reporting foul/smelly street drains.

We probably need to know why some plates have venting grilles and only in George Street, is it just an old-fashioned 'relic' structure or why do they occur (uniquely) there in the first place?

[Gerry Glyde]

I would rather walk down the street today than in days when it was necessary to keep keen ear on a shout from above, "below" to be followed by a shower of certain debris of life.

The piggeries in the back yards of many houses and hovels in High St and surrounding roads up towards the West Hill. I seem to remember that it was the talk of the town towards the end of the 19th C.

Nothing changes.

[Richard]

I had always believed a man came round with a cart in the evening to pick up waste, simply called "night soil", and that it was spread on nearby fields to grow wonderful herbs and carrots etcetera.
Now I learn it was simply flung out of upper story windows or fed to the pigs, they certainly knew how to party in the Old Town, back then !!

[Gerry Glyde]

I have confused two things. The natural waste would either have been collected or have been washed down by the rain or in rivers. The Bourne was virtually an open sewer.
As for the pigs, it was just the pervading smell not anything else.

[Richard]

There was probably always a tendency to simply use the sea as a dump for sewage in coastal areas but the problems encountered would be all to apparent when wealthy visitors began to appear on the scene looking for healthy bathing spots.

By 1870, Hastings Manure Company had a new sewage works at Rock-a-Nore which was attracting visitors from all over England.
Hastings could boast of having been the first watering place in the kingdom that had entirely deodorised the sewage and prevented discharge of offensive matter in its neighbourhood.
Presumably there were pipes reaching far out to sea as there still are today.

Inland parts of the country had to dispose of human waste in different ways perhaps the Victorians had to tackle waste in massively growing cities such as London as sanitation and the understanding of the spread of diseases such as cholera were probably not taken too seriously until then.