Market Cottages

[ian.hudson3]

I am researching my family history. One relative lived in Market Cottages in the 1851 Census. I think these cottages were around the Saxon Road area.
Does anyone know if there are any pictures or information on them please

[ColinL]

The Public Library reference section at Claremont may have a picture in their records. Phone 0345 6080196

I had a quick look on the Hastings Observer archive and a postcard site without success.

That area of Clive Vale had several nurseries and market gardens at that period and it is not very likely that type of view would have been photographed

[Richard]

Saxon road was built in 1886 on the route of a former footpath that went across the Clive Vale Brickyard. That Brickyard is thought to pre-date 1642 when there is the first record of it being mentioned.
(ref - Geoff's history of Clive Vale).

It really makes you wonder what exactly was going on in Clive Vale, in the very early days, not much industry really, except for a Farm and the locally prominent Brickyard.
But why was a brickyard needed when Clive Vale did not experience much in the way of development until much later, when the Victorian expansion of Hastings itself suddenly required labour from that outlying area and building materials such as clay, to make the bricks required, could be sourced more readily quite locally?

If 'Market Cottages' were listed in the 1851 Census then they clearly pre-date the later Victorian expansion of Clive Vale in the 1870's and 80's and those cottages were probably demolished in the process.
Perhaps the cottages were even connected with the remote Clive Vale brickyard?

To put this in perspective, consider the following:

The St. Andrew's Archway, described by some as 'a hideous hole', stood at the bottom of Queen's Road, until it was replaced in 1898, with the present lofty viaduct carrying the railway over the road. The original archway or tunnel, was built of bricks made from clay taken from the brick-fields on the site of the present Alexandra Park and some of the ponds in the park were originally clay pits ' in those days bricks were usually made from local brick-earth in temporary kilns dug as close to the point of use as possible.
Clay was and is present almost everywhere in Hastings (known as the Wadhurst Clay geological formation) why then should a brickyard spring up in an outlying area called Clive Vale as early as the 1600's?