Medlow Hotel to Medlow Court

[Richard]

Hastings has a much longer tradition as a resort attracting relatively wealthy holiday-makers than the areas made popular by the working classes from the North of England who, by contrast, virtually created the Boarding-house holiday towns of Blackpool, Morecambe and South-port.
The railways were a catalyst in both cases but for Hastings, in the south, the working-class visitors by rail brought in their own sandwiches and probably did not take to the town in the same way, did not spend their money on longer holidays and were basically "day-trippers".
There was a lot of poverty in the North of England, until the Industrial Revolution, with its many factories giving employment to ordinary people, who could then afford to have longer holidays.
Conditions for the working classes were often very hard in both the south and the north but in the case of Hastings the working-classes formed a completely separate entity superimposed on a backdrop of wealthy Victorians with Hotels and Guest Houses they could neither afford nor would be welcome nearby.

[Richard]

To what extent the wealthy upper classes rented holiday hotels in Hastings as opposed to living there in large mansions?
This would have changed fairly drastically as the railways arrived bringing in the middle-class Victorians who would have rented holiday hotels as well as living there, as well as bringing in the numerous 'day-trippers'.

[Richard]

two articles give an idea of the changes associated with the game-changing arrival of the railways:

http://www.rootschat.com/history/hastin ... iew/70/26/

http://www.rootschat.com/history/hastin ... nt/view/3/

[Gerry Glyde]

Well found article Richard. The author is a guy named Chris who has posted on the site

[Gerry Glyde]

I have just found this snippet from Marchant's Hastings Past.
Talking of hotels in the 1880s he wrote

"By then the railway was bringing in large numbers of middle class visitors throughout the summer and Bank Holiday crowds filled the town to over-flowing. Nevertheless it is clear that Hastings hankered after gentility"

[Richard]

"Hastings hankered after gentility".
That was quite true in the sense that Hastings wanted to attract the wealthier classes drawn to quieter St Leonards:

Consider the following dizzying description of Hastings as a late Victorian tourist resort, described by Steve Peak in 'The Hastings Chronicle', it is in quite stark contrast to the resort of St leonards.
Steve drew on the photo's of 'George Woods' the eminent photographer of Victorian Sussex who was really fascinated by Hastings and produced many photographs of areas near the beach.

"Hastings in the 1890’s presents a vivid picture of a popular Victorian holiday beach, packed with trippers and the people who made a living from entertaining and selling things to them.
The holidaymakers seen lying on the beach, strolling on the promenade and hunting crabs in the rocks are mainly ordinary working people from the London area, perhaps on their annual works 'beano', or enjoying a few days with the family in a seaside lodging house. Amongst them are the boatmen, fortune-telling dogs and birds, punch and Judy shows, flower sellers, photographers, shoe-shiners, musicians, and hawkers of toffee apples, ice cream, seashells, tea and cakes.
Towering above them are the huge sailing yachts that took the visitors for trips on the heaving ocean. The extraordinary variety of activity shows just how popular the seaside holiday was in late Victorian times. On a beach only three-quarters of a mile long (between Hastings Pier and the Lifeboat House) tens of thousands of visitors, hawkers and entertainers formed a living throng of continuous activity that came and went with passing showers, and ebbed and flowed with the tides. Hastings had been one of Britain's leading resorts for many decades, but just at the time ‘Woods’ was taking his pictures it was at a crossroads in its history. The town in the past had attracted many wealthier visitors, including the 'carriage folk' who came with their own horses and carriages to stay for months.
In the 1890s, however, these better-off people were deserting Hastings for the fashionable continental holiday, or the more modem attractions of new resorts like Eastbourne and Bexhill, a few miles west of Hastings. It was in the 1890s that Hastings had to choose between trying to stop the disappearance of the wealthier visitors by investing heavily in upgrading its ageing facilities, or instead moving 'down-market' to specifically cater for the masses of trippers, seen in ‘Woods' photographs, who actually wanted to come to Hastings. Unfortunately for the town, Hastings Corporation made what can now be seen as the fundamental mistake of trying to lure the wealthy but with very little new investment, and some good time after the upmarket resort at St Leonards, built specially for the wealthy, had been created – as the upmarket rival to Hastings - in the late 1820’s.
So, at the same time as discouraging the ‘trippers’ by passing restrictive byelaws against many of the beach activities that attracted them, Hastings lost many sources of income and when the wealthy failed to return to Hastings, the town also lost its sense of direction as a resort and entered a major decline that is still being felt today."

[beebop]

My grandparents Elsa & Rafe (Ralph) Hudson ran the Medlow Hotel in the 1960's and 70's. I remember staying there as a child in the very top (servants quarters) and they had badgers in the back garden. Does anyone have any other information as I would love to add the the family archive.

[Jojo]

Does anyone know the address as I found this photo of my grandparents and we always wondered where they were and I think this place looks like it