Hastings & St Leonards - 1980s Footage 

Watching this recording is a very emotional experience for me. Because (a) I lived and worked in Hastings from 1969 to 1971 and (b) my father played cricket up till the Priory ground was closed - you can see him in this video bowling

Those beautiful houses overlooking the the old cricket pavilion, now overlook the rear end of a multi storey car park. Well done Hastings council!

This is lovely, I was born in ST Leonard’s hospital, in 1965, My Mum and Dad lived with my Nan and Grandad, Nellie and Eric who ran the Lansdowne hotel on the seafront for a few years Hilda and Harold (I think that was their names ran the hotel beside that!), loved the green in front of the hotels there! Plus the stone lion outside! Visited Hastings historical society about six years ago now and spoke to a gentleman behind a desk, he was very nice and said that he remembered the Lansdowne hotel having a good reputation, was a lovely visit, (the hotel let me and my Mum and Dad in to have a Quick Look around! So lovely and thoughtful of them! Thankyou for the memory of it! Hoping that you do well😘)

Lived here and left in 1980. Was in a children’s home Guestling house amongst others. Great times. Thanks for the video

WOW...WOW....!!!!! So brilliant!! My home town how I remember it as a teenager! Thanks for this!

You should see if you can digitally enhance this. So glad that someone back then took the time to do this. It's how i remember it. .. born in 1983 there

Thanks for posting this. It was definately filmed in 1988/9, that's when Hellbound : Hellraiser came out at the cinemas. My Great Aunty lived at St Leonards, I wish I could remember on which road! Very happy memories! I just posted on youtube our 8mm cinefilm of one of our day trips to visit Aunty, the Sun Lounge Marine Cafe which was our yearly haunt. We would spend the day with a picnic in the sheltered benches on the seafront right nearby. Salmon and cucumber sandwiches, almond slices and later, a strawberry mivvi. Aunty would dance in the sun lounge regularly. I remember the organ in there, it was awesome! I wanted to have a go hahaha. Love Hastings!

Superb video. I watched it from beginning to end and thoroughly enjoyed it. I miss the days when you could drive around the town in every direction. This was 1988 - Hellbound Hellraiser II was at the pictures. Oh how I miss Our Price - and Woolies! I dream of going back to those times - the 80's was a magical decade and things were far better than they are now. I despise this day and age - if time travel was possible I know where I would be going. Thanks for the great video!

brings back happy memories this used to go to Hastings a lot when i was a kid with my parents

Wow, I had no idea anybody had commented on this video until now. So glad you like it as much as me. I lived in Hastings (Perth Road, Silverhill) from 1979/1980 to 2001 at 23, when i moved to scotland. Im really pleased it's not just me that is affected by Hastings and now lack of Hastings-ness for homesick me. It's so heartening to see posts on 1066 forums from people round the world saying they miss Hastings... take a look, google 1066 hastings guestbook It makes me proud. :cry:

Originally moved to Hastings when I was 12 from Surrey. Just been speaking to an old friend from the 80's and now we both live in other places in our late 50's. This is where I started my music career that is still going today. Great times at the Crypt and Saturdays, many of my mates ended up driving those little busses and there where plenty of them. Great memories of some great times, thanks for posting this (bit late I know)

3 almost criminal acts in Hastings. 1) Pedestrianising George Street and stripping it of its character, turning it into a refuge for tattooed idiots. 2) Allowing the pier to fall into disrepair, the dodgy way it ended and the failure to rebuild it into a style suiting the surroundings and history. I'm not happy about the new plans for a super modern style, although I suppose it's better than nothing. 3) Demolishing the Cricket Ground. What were they thinking of? The last thing Hastings needed was more shops of the same type.

First Visited Hastings on Friday 3 August 1984 with my parents & friends on a day out from Tunbridge Wells where they were living at the time (I was from Alsager in Cheshire ,staying with them on a week's holiday) and I remember buying an ice cream and dropped it onto my new decent shirt while walking along the seafront before stopping en route for a dinner on the drive back to Tunbridge Wells. I visited again in October 84 and went in a Go-Kart ride but managed to bump into a wall and my sunglasses flew off for miles but lucily was not seriously injured.

Thanks for the video. I was in Hastings in 1989 and this video brought back good memories.

My parents had the Clarence pub, from 1982 to 1985

Just reminds you , that you never appreciate what you've got until it's gone

This is fantastic!...thanks so much for uploading!

Thanks for uploading Mark!

Great to sit here in Perth, Western Australia, and watch places that as a kid were very important to me (albeit in the 60s) Was hoping to see The Disc Jockey Plus One - home of Big Al, but that was earlier I guess. Thanks for uploading. Mike (Tingle)

hastings town centre is really booming in this video compared to how it is now makes it look like a ghost town now!

Sir, thank you for this very interesting record of how things used to be in Hastings & District! although I had left the area by 1989, it revived a lot of memories!

Great footage. I spent from 1987-1990 propping up the bar in the Town Crier, so brings back memories - Some good, some not so good!

My goodness! This really brought back some memories. My Dad used to drive those old Hastings and District minibuses. I remember FADS and M&S on Queens Road 😁

Thanks for the info mate. I'm so pleased to see this video means as much to others, as it does to me.

Great vid and thanks a lot for sharing this with us. I saw this video of yours and another one by the Harbour Arm on the Hastingschronicle website. Oh how i miss those days back then.

So interesting to see this, was born in Hastings in early 80's and great to compare to now, still living here. Fascinating to see how it has changed.

i was born in 1996 in Hastings but to be able to look back at what was is for me such a good feeling also emotional at the same time i watch this video and think of how much better it looked than today's town i wish i had seen this amazing sight with my own eye's than what i see today... Thank you

As an early 2000s kid and living in Hastings since birth I can sure say I wish I was an 80s kid. Also trying to recognise the roads.

great video so many memories, there was a really good chippy up the back road by the cricket ground on the way to get the train, the trading post was my second home at that time. one for electronics and the other army surplus shop,

Love this video, I have lived in and out of the area, but still work here for nearly 40 years, in the days before we had the parking enforcement!!! And you could park within reason without fear of a ticket back then!

When I first came to Hastings as a young boy in the 1960s, the town had real character. This excellent footage is taken some time into the start of the "decline". I missed much of this period of the town's evolution. "Losing" the cricket ground (the Memorial, etc.) was very sad.

Watching this I'd say this was post 87, probably 88. Clothes and cars started to gradually look more 90s from about 88. Great nostalgia, and a random recommend from RU-vid, 8 years after this was put on. 👍🙂

Love Hastings but growing up in 1984 Hastings was way better than working in 2022 Hastings🤣

It was another era. I moved down here when I was 15 from Stoke and loved living near the seaside. I met my first girlfriend and there were so many friends. My family was young and it seemed like we had so much time. Thanks for the film and a glimpse of those days again.

Thanks for this, Great panning style dead steady very professional. a crying shame they got rid of the green space, but amazing to see what has been improved on too..

I was born in ‘92, it’s crazy to see how different Hastings was in the ‘80s!

Nice film, I like the relaxed style, too many people film in a rush and it isn't easy to see anything. Thank you for sharing.

Heartbreaking....look what they done to our town,ma.

Thank you for posting this with the info of where it is 111need support too

This is incredible! I lived in Hastings 2008 to 2016. So much has changed, but the gulls sound the same :-D Also good to see a couple of my watering holes; The Carlisle and The Clarence :-)

Loved that ,thankyou

Thanks for sharing this video as its fascinating as i lived in Hastings in the 80s theres a lot of long lost landmarks+ shops* that sadly no longer exist + many i had totally forgotten abt until i watched this video.I was living there from 1978 right through the 80s + into the 90s and beyond... and there seems to be a lot more traffic around than there is now.I dont particularly like the shopping centre but i cant name any shopping centre i do like but i have seen worse. What was criminal + stupid on the part of the town planners was the demolition of the tall victorian building opposite the town hall opposite the cinema.A landmark building + 2 more commercial properties just to widen a short stretch of road.What you have now is a dismal dead lifeless space with 2 sad looking kiosks.Pure stupidity + all about cars and traffic.Also removing the walls around the individual traffic/road islands at the memorial area so now its not somewhere to sit on the walls and watch everything go by and meet up with friends which i always used to do in the 80s so its another non-space.Stupid council *Shops like that weird old fashioned record shop on queens Road on the corner that always had that weird smell + also Huckells clothes shop where all the casuals in the 80s went+Stylus Records+Huffeys Newsagents by the station that i never went into although in hindsight i wish i had. Everything was much simpler back in them days

My late mother worked in Marks and Spencers from about 1979 to 1992. The current M&S is opposite. The old M&S building still exists but is disused. It was occupied by another clothing retailers for some time, Peacocks, but that closed in 2020.

i was barely a teenager, wandering those streets. The cricket ground I remember well, and there was a playground round the corner from there and they had mint choc chip Cornetto's for sale that my pop used to buy me.

i'm born and bread Hastings, born in '85 so i only remember parts of Hastings like this, but its amazing to see and i cannot believe how much it has changed!!! Lovely to see the town so busy and full of people!! Such a shame its not still that busy!! thanks for posting :)

Excellent video, full of memories for me and all who remember the town in the 80s. I distinctly recall buying clothes at Cheapjacks, getting some of them cleaned at Sketchley, renting tv from RJ French, watching cricket occasionally at the cricket ground, shopping at Woolies, buying cigarettes and my paper at Huffeys, oh, so many wonderful memories. Thank you so so much for posting this!

I'm not from Hastings but visited there many, many times and loved it there with the family. Still love it, but since the pier and cricket ground have gone and George Street has been pedestrianised, the heart has been ripped out.

This is a blast from the past. Thank You for doing this, Face Book is swamped with this footage. xx

I loved the eighties! Thanks for sharing👍

This is brilliant! Have just shared :)

Very strange watching this, like looking through a screen into the past as if it still happens somewhere. At 0:04:51 the sign I painted over St Andrews Market. At 0:27:57 my dad beeps to the camera in a Cortina I think he had borrowed. I have my arm out of the window. At 0:29:52 John Woolloff, wearing a yellow t-shirt pushes someone away from him. Someone, possibly Nick Stott, sits down next to him. At 0:29:13, the late John Leskew speaks and the camera pans round to him a few seconds later.

The cricket pitch was owned by a lovely man who left it to Hastings Borough Council in his will provided they always kept it as the cricket pitch he loved. Obviously the will was overturned, ungreatful people. They could have at least put a nice marina in there, but no they had to build a monstrosity of a horrible shopping precinct.

Wow, this is so awesome.

Great video!

A great upload. I love to see 1980's Britain - especially videos containing plenty of ECW bodied Bristol VRs in their heyday. Why I like Bristol VRs with ECW coachwork is still a little unclear? This could possibly have something to do with being born in 1980 and travelling on them as a child with mum. This will also explain a lot of other fascinations I have as an adult, some of which I wouldn't discuss necessarily on a platform like RU-vid.

This is awesome I was born in 86 so I remember parts of this you should do a video of now and then to see the difference

Thank god for on-line shopping. The noise! But nice footage. Thumbs up and hitting that red button. Come visit when you have a chance. And thanks for this.

My goodness look at the cars😍

Really brings back some memories. I remember in one of the shots is where I lost a wobbly tooth as a kid eating an ice bun! Amazing to see

Hey great video. showing you support from James Cox's channel. Liked, Subbed and added your video to my supporters playlist. Much Love

The original Top Shop building to make way for a road was a beautiful building. What a shameless act all in the name of progress. Top Shop were vacant from the town for a while then returning and then closing in 2019. Now gone altogether.

Sacrilege the Hastings council allowing the destruction of the fantastic building in Albert Street, (36 mins 16 secs ) can never be replaced , also the Memorial , the focal point of Hastings , not to mention the famous cricket ground and the grandeur hotel that was pulled down and replaced by Tesco's and superseded by the indoor market ,

Core theres was much more shops then what we have here to day I live here now for 20 years I do love it here but we do need more shops great video

The loss of the cricket ground was regrettable; I thought that it would have been best if they'd put the shopping centre where Safeway is and incorporated Safeway into it. The pedestrianisation of the town centre was a very good thing; I was a bus driver in Hastings in the 1980s and struggled through those motor vehicle cluttered streets with the blue and yellow mini-buses and Bristol VRs. Lots of my favourite shops have gone especially Olio Books in Robertson Street and many others too.

that's Hastings as I remember it. Haven't been there in almost 30 years

Wow! The amount of traffic in the town seems crazy compared to now😮

This is amazing to watch, a real time capsule! Didn't see anything of the other areas mentioned in the video description though? Nevertheless a real treasure, thanks loads for uploading

WOW - Never thought id see these memories again, I was 7 at the time living in hastings. This was a great time for me as a child growing up specially with all that synth music :-) thanks for the upload, trying to see if I can recognise anyone lol. x

Thanks. Over the last few years i have been trying to find a photo of my local sweet shop i went to as a kid. I think it was called "one penny two penny" and was on battle road between Ruby chinese and sweeny todds hairdressers. by the zebra crossing across from blacklands newsagent. Thanks again. Mark :)

Thank you for the video lived in Hastings all my life I found it’s so upsetting Hasting has aways been a bit rundown but aways love it so sad Hastings Council has a lot to answer

Crikey real blast from the past, remember Huckells a bit further back in time in the mid 70’s it was *the* place to buy trendy clothes

Wow Mark and that's before the online retail boom. What's it like now? Being Coastal it no doubt had some golden years. I suspect going further back than the 70's. There are some impressive old buildings and pavilions mind you. All in all a very interesting place with much older history to boot. Good footage.All the best. Mark

Great Video .. Never been to this place but watched it all still, i like looking back in time .. btw the year is July 1989 .. saw it on a poster 31:50

me too, i'm glad i'm not alone. :)

I loved the cricket ground when i was little it is a shame a boring shopping mall replaced it. And now no public toilets in town centre.

Thanks for the footage, I wish it was still like this.

Jogged a few memories around the shops , Trueforms & Fads !

I remember those places.

Notice how no one is freaking out about someone with a video camera like they do these days. They’ve done such a number on people.

I totally feel your pain mate. I felt like that when they dropped a huge asda at silverhill junction. Despite now living in scotland, 'Astin's is, and will always, be my home though. I was brought up in Hastings from 1980 to 2001, on Hillside rd, then perth rd between silverhill / hollington. Remember the old police station opposite tivoli tavern pub? I'm lookingg for some old photographs of battle road (1980s - 1990s) when the sweet factory was opposite rising sun pub.

2nd that. I been in nearly all these shops, except sketcheys for dry cleaning and a few more.

THANX 4 DA MEMORIES THIS IS THE 1 OF THE BEST TIMES OF MY CHILDHOOD GR8 MEMORIES THE 80,S BUT SAD 2 SAY HASTINGS IS NOTHIING LIKE IT NOW 2014 CRAP LOL BRING ON OUR NEW PIER & TRY & BRING BACK SOME OF THE OLD MEMORIES I HOLD SO DEAR OF HASTINGS !! THANX 4 THE UP FELLA !!

Huckells was a very good mens clothes shop. Nothing like it now. Some empty shops making way for new road layouts. One thing though, everywhere is bustling.

Bloody hell mark... ha this is cool ... good find :)

Great video. I moved from London to St.Leonards in 1988. Brings back some memories! I'd forgotten what Hastings and St. Leonards looked like back then. Do you have any vids of the seafront at all?

32:58 my mum in the red skirt with my dad leaning on the wall next to her ☺️

I was born in a flat above the currys shop in Queens Street

Vintage and very cool. I loved the 80s. Fellow creator here stopping by to watch, like & subscribe to show support of your channel.

FYI: I couldn't stay to watch it all but I did watch 46 mins and 55 seconds.

A friend sent me a link to this video and when I have the time I will watch it all. Did you make this video Mark? I was born and grew up in Hastings. Haven't lived there for years but still my home town and will always love it.

watched, liked and subscribed.

Just found your video. It's great but a bit depressing. Everything seemed to be selling up. I lived in the Hughenden Road area for the first 20 years of my life, and left in the late 50's. I've been back several times for brief visits and each time they seemed to have taken something else down or cancelled something! I just happened to be there one day when they were demolishing the Memorial! I just hope that things have bucked up for the place - it seems to have so much potential.

Your on,y video to date on RU-vid, Mark. Add another 1400 and you could catch up with mine mostly created in Hastings & St Leonards but more wordy. The poignancy of everything that changes comes out in just 5 minutes of watching this; when I'll get to watching it all remains to be seen. Thank you.

So apart from Sketchley dry cleaners, were there any any shops that hadn't moved or were open ?

I moved down here at just about this time living very close to the town centre in Braybooke Road. Very interesting indeed. Was this taken for the purposed of the building of the shopping centre on the Cricket Ground please Mark Bartlett?

Supported you! Found you on i am a creator playlist. :)

The shops in Queens Parade were making way for Priory Meadow that far back?

Fantastic film, This was 1989 according to the beer festival poster, I was 25 and attended the festival on the Thursday and the Saturday that year, I'm not sure if it has been edited but there is no, Old Town, Ore, Silverhill, East and West Hill, Seafront, West St Leonards, Warrior Square as it says in the description, just the town center, Hastings council are vandals for the destruction they have inflicted on us the people of Hastings and St Leonards and not just the sacrificing our jewel in the crown of a cricket ground for a car park and shops but the destruction they have wrought throughout the town.

Thanks dai. It's a bit sad though.

Not sure why comments disabled, but they are back on now.