Provincial Hotel Hastings

[johnpan]

Having lived in Australia for the past 35 years I have been frustrated by not having been able to identify the location of a photograph of a group of people, including my late father, outside the 'Provincial Hotel'.

My father was born in Liss and I had assumed that the hotel would be within a few miles of that area. In preparation for a proposed visit to England I renewed my efforts and was delighted to find a similar photograph on this site in which the signage and architecture confirm that it is the Havelock Road premises.

I estimate that my picture was taken around the early years of the 20th century.

I would love to know if anyone may know of the reason for the group of over 30, presumably from the Liss area, being in Hastings.

[whiffler]

Flitting through to do others things, but Hastings & St Leonards had various establishments used by Union or Employer welfare funds to take people from smog-filled colder climes to cleaner warmer sea air.

I'm not sure that Liss (Hampshire?) quite meets the bill, but might have been an outing to somewhere away from their locale.

Just a thought

[Richard Pollard]

Just shown this to a friend of mine who states that this was often used as a meeting establishment for early Trade Union personnel, who would assemble at the Provincial Hotel (and like others mind you) for a couple of days or so and have meetings to discuss work related items etc, and have a general chit chat and an excuse to have their pictures taken along with the staff outside to hang on their walls when they got home! The assembled people would travel only from around the South and possible home counties of outer London. Mind you the Unions paid for the travel and the couple of nights here! More than likely no more than £3 for each then, hate to think to how much it would cost today for the same venue and travel?
Please don't take this as gospel as this could be something quite different, but Paul (my friend) is quite sure that that's what going on here as his late great grandfather went to such meetings as this at the Provincial, imagine the picture dates from about 1918/20 or possibly a little earlier!
R.P

[Richard]

The Provincial, and probably many other Hotels in the area, were frequently used for public meetings:

1) Shareholder meetings, (A.G.M's)
2) Dissatisfied ratepayers, (regarding the 'ring' of prominent residents with fingers in every pie), etcetera.

Here is a short account of a couple of such meetings:

1) The Hastings and St Leonards Omnibus Company should be wound up, the adjourned annual meeting decided on Tuesday 20 February 1883. A large gathering of shareholders in the Provincial Hotel, 17 Havelock Road, heard that the company had lost £1,000 of their money since it was set up in January 1878.

2) A cross-party meeting of ratepayers created the Hastings Ratepayers Union on 17 September 1890, because of their anger at the way the Council and the town were being “fearfully mismanaged”. Harry J Morgan had first called the meeting, in the Provincial Hotel on September 12, 1890.

Maybe johnpan knows if his late father was involved in any such meeting by way of his trade or interests and involvements?

Good Luck!

[ColinL]

An observation and a thought.

There is a mix of head wear on the men. Bowler hats, jaunty boaters. flat caps and flat caps. Interestingly the are mixed up in the group although the bowlers are in the majority in the front row. There is also an age range although the majority are middle aged. The mix suggests a more informal, than a formal group. The group photo outside an establishment including the staff was not unusual for the time and would have been a memento of the event.

Although your father was born in Liss, it might have been possible that he worked for a time in the Hastings area, either on a temporary transfer from an existing employer or just having moved fro a shorter or longer period.

[Gerry Glyde]

http://www.hastingspubhistory.com/page11.html

There may be some information in the pub history book

[Richard]

The Provincial Hotel (and Provincial Cottages) are mentioned, at a later date, of 1923, as being located at 18. Havelock Road and that is where 'The Brass Monkey' is more recently listed.
No. 17. is listed as 'Hastings Permanent Building Soc.,'
A photo shows WWI troops billetted at The Provincial,
reference the following thread:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4050

[johnpan]

Many thanks for all the information received so far. I should have mentioned in my original post that viewtopic.php?t=4050#p15090 was the clue which enabled me to locate the source of the photograph which has been puzzling me for many years. My father was a carpenter/joiner who worked for Liberty of Regent Street and was responsible for the construction of the Tudor staircase installed in the 1924 Argyll Place extension of the store. It is possible, therefore that the picture is of a group of workers from the Highgate factory in which the construction took place from the hulks of two old timber ships.