Christopher Maxwell-Stewart saved St Leonards

The 1960s zeitgeist was for demolition. Old was boring. New was better. Neophiliacs were in charge. In St Leonards-on-Sea, Christopher Maxwell-Stewart, who has died aged 88, saw it differently. Bernard McGinley reports on an important part of local history.

London lost the Euston Arch and the Coal Exchange. St Leonards lost Quarry House, built by James Burton in 1830 and formerly the home of Sir Woodbine Parish, diplomat and scientist. Other parts of preVictorian St Leonards were also damaged and threatened.

The short-termism and shortsightedness of this was clear to CMS, who advocated a ‘long life, loose fit’ approach to the reuse of old buildings. As a boy he had seen the bombed ruins of St Leonard’s church on the seafront, another James Burton building. The war also disrupted his upbringing, in places such as Wimbledon Park and Yorkshire. In rural Warwickshire he stayed with a mechanical engineer and his French wife who taught him French.

In 1945 however his widowed mother started a guest house at 5 The Mount, once lived in by Herbert Spencer, the Victorian social theorist who coined ‘survival of the fittest’. While young Christopher peeled spuds there and did the gardening, his elder brother waited on tables. He was also able to attend the Uplands County Secondary Technical School nearby (also known Archery Villas, facing the Archery Ground).

From there he went on to Hastings Grammar School and then to Queen Mary College, London University, on a scholarship to study civil engineering. There he became Vice-President of the Students Union.

On one occasion he attended a dance at the grand villa in Regent’s Park known as The Holme (once the Burton family home, designed by Decimus and built by James). Apart from walking around St Leonards, it was his first substantial introduction to the many achievements of the Burtons.

Civil engineer

As a qualified civil engineer he worked on post-war reconstruction at London County Council (forerunners of the Greater London Council). As well as working in reinforced concrete and steel structures, he developed his appreciation of architecture in classes at Goldsmiths College, London University.

From the LCC he joined the structural engineers and consultants [Ove] Arup & Partners, in the design office. When the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier came to lunch, Christopher Maxwell-Stewart was constructively at the table too as a French-speaking builder.

Several times Ove Arup sent him to Nigeria to work on projects including bridges and roads and cocoa sheds. By then he was married to the highly accomplished artist Prue Theobalds and there were young children to consider. Conditions were poor and the family were sent home. CMS joined them when civil war broke out in Nigeria 1967.

St Leonards-on-Sea depredations

Back home the damage to St Leonards was continuing. The authorities were blasé about demolition of distinguished old buildings that lacked protection. (Conservation Areas only had their modest legal beginnings in 1967 and 1971.) Rosemount at the top of Archery Road was flattened. The Archery Ground had a College of Arts and Technology plonked on it. Much later, when the College’s demolition was being considered as part of planning application HS/FA/09/00482, demolition of the College was approved on the grounds of its low quality. The HBC committee report (June 2012) notoriously commented:

Architectural quality
. . . the existing college buildings have no architectural quality that is worth preserving (Policy C2). The central slab block in particular is of a hugely unsympathetic appearance and poor architectural quality.

The planners could have arrived at that opinion before planning permission and construction, when it was being pointed out.

Burtons’ St Leonards Society

Threats to the heart of St Leonards led Christopher to be part of the foundation of The Mount Preservation Society. Soon this became the Burtons’ St Leonards Society. In 1968 he created a Let’s Save Burtons’ St Leonards Exhibition, with co-founder Cecil Bacon, the nationally known illustrator.

Publicity brought results. With a quiet but determined manner, Christopher was willing and able to enrol some big names in support of the defence of St Leonards. One was the architectural historian Sir John Summerson, whose knowledge of Georgian development was unrivalled. Another was Lady Longford, also an authority on the 18th and 19th centuries. The Georgian Group too were interested and supportive.

The consensus grew that St Leonards-on-Sea was an unusual and exceptional place, a purpose-built resort of national importance, and deserving of appreciation and protection. Many were appreciative (though local government people tended to be less so: when Christopher was nominated for the 1066 Award, there was no acknowledgement or further response from Hastings Borough Council).

Christopher and supporters dealt with threats to Allegria (Quarry Hill) and Gloucester Lodge (St Leonard’s Gardens) from Hastings Borough Council. He was also involved in saving Manor House in Bexhill Old Town, and found the energy and time to do an MSc at City University.

In the 2000s, CMS was involved with STAG (Save the Archery Ground), though sadly the Archery Ground remains under threat. In the campaign for conservation of the Burton Tomb, he provided drawings and specifications. He was also involved in restoration work in the East Colonnade at Philpot’s department store.

Help and fulfilment

Always conscientious of the less fortunate, CMS worked to help the local homeless through the Snowflake Trust.  He was also involved with the Emmaus charity and supported Warming Up The Homeless. He was of the firm view that he did not want thanks for what he had done, and that – rather – we carry out our own self-fulfilment. Even so, it remains incontestable that Christopher Maxwell Stewart was a major benefactor of St Leonards, its people and buildings, its past and future. Without him we would have had cheap architecture locally and a wider loss of civic identity.

However busy he was, his knowledge of St Leonards only seemed to grow: in writing for instance on James Haliburton the Egyptologist (the son of James Burton), or in advising the Decimus Burton Society on its formation, and contributing to its journal too. He stood down as chair of the Burtons’ St Leonards Society only in 2023, for the second time. In October 2024 he attended his wife’s talk at the Royal Victoria Hotel on the wreck of the Amsterdam at Bulverhythe, and seemed quite well. At the end of the month Christopher Maxwell-Stewart died unexpectedly, at home in St Leonards, in the presence of his wife and family.

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