‘Beating the Bounds’ goes west:  Saturday 17 May

Last year the ancient ceremony of ‘beating the bounds’ took place in the Old Town. This year West St Leonards is being celebrated. Bernard McGinley explains an old innovation by the Hastings Local History Group and the Old Hastings Preservation Society.

Walking the parish bounds has many purposes: noticing local details, protecting open spaces and wildlife, and meeting people from the same area are among them. It’s amazing what a place has when you look closely. 

Beating the Bounds this year is of the western part of the Liberty of Hastings Boundary. (A Liberty is an area that had the rights and duties of a Cinque Port, as Bulverhythe and Pebsham became in 1359 in the reign of Edward III.  The Cinque Port of Hastings was established by Royal Charter in 1155.)

The start is at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday 17 May, at the car park beside the Bo-Peep Inn on the Bexhill Road (A259). West St. Leonards station is nearby, on the Charing Cross line. 98 and 99 buses go along the seafront to Bo-Peep. The notionally circular route is just over four miles long (nearly seven kilometres), and mostly flat. The walk will end at about 12:30 p.m. back beside the Bo-Peep.

Children must be accompanied by a responsible adult. Well-behaved dogs on a short lead are allowed at the discretion of the walk leaders. People preferring to do just part of the route have that option. 

The route is mainly off-road – turning from the A259 at Sheepwash Bridge, going northward by the Haven River, and around the marshy area behind the Bull Inn (where there used to be a natural harbour and are still mediæval ruins), then under the railway line at Glyne Gap and returning along the coastal path. The route will go past historical features such as Napoleonic and World War II defences.

Asten

Local stream the Haven is sometimes known as the River Asten. The Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton in his Poly-Olbion (1612, 1622) wrote of the bloody local events of 1066:

And Asten, once distain’d with native English blood:
(Whose soil, when yet but wet with any little rain,
Doth blush : as put in mind of those there sadly slain,
When Hastings arbour gave unto the Norman powers,
Whose name and honours now are denizen’d for ours).

Alternatively the river sometimes running red may be due to iron deposits in the soil. Even the name Asten is possibly a corruption of ‘Hasta’ which gave its name to Hastings.

Beating

Stout footwear is advised, and wearing silly hats is also part of the tradition. To join in fully, bring a willow wand or similar stick (or a garden cane or a bunch of twigs) to beat each stone / natural feature three times. At each stone / feature, the tradition is that participants beat the stone three times with their stick, saying ‘Mark, Mark, Mark’, in the Shakespearean sense of ‘take note of, remember’.  (The rituals, such as they are, are neither religious nor paganic but fun and sociable.)

The Bo-Peep and Marina Fountain Inns will be open and serving refreshments as usual (Bo-Peep from 9:30 a.m., Marina Fountain from 12 noon). There are public conveniences in West Marina Gardens, near the statue of King Harold and Edith Swan-neck, and at Glyne Gap.

Railway

History doesn’t end. The Beating will go past the first two stations to serve the town (one,  St Leonards West Marina, c.1846 until the Beeching Axe). At 5 p.m. that same Saturday, the new history panels at Warrior Square Station will be officially opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.  This is part of the Platform Panel Project.

Afterwards there will be a musical performance at Archer Lodge (A Town Explores a Book), Charles Road, St Leonards TN38 0QX. This in turn is part of Railway 200, commemorating the Stockton to Darlington line opening in 1825, the world’s first public railway). Hastings Museum (open Tuesday – Saturday 10 – 5, Sunday 11 – 4:30), is having an exhibition of railway memorabilia until 29 June as part of Railway 200.

 

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