Beauport Park monument suffering from neglect

While exploring Beauport Park woods, Chris Bell, a retired architect and Zoom Arts member living in St Leonards, discovered a monument, now sadly neglected among a cluster of holiday chalets, built by a previous owner of the woods in the 19th century in honour of his departed wife. The writer laments such poor treatment of our building heritage.

Some time ago, whilst planning a walk in Beauport Park woods, I noticed a symbol denoting a monument on my OS map of the area. This discovery stimulated my curiosity and I decided find out more information on the internet concerning the history of the park, the nature of the monument, and why it was built there. Images of the monument showed it to be a small Ionic temple containing a statue of a lady clad in classical Greek attire.

On the walk, armed with my camera, I trudged up the path leading from the A21. It was a strenuous climb through the dense woods and I felt quite breathless when I reached the top. I gasped even more when I glimpsed the temple through a clutter of shiny mobile holiday chalets.

Gone was the surrounding garden which I saw on the old photographs and it was a shock to see that the temple had been vandalised, as was evident from the missing coping stones. Weeds and shrubs sprouted from gaps in the stonework, enhancing the feeling of neglect and decay.

Evidence of these changes can be seen by comparison with the above photo of the site as it was in 2008 which was taken by Julian Guffogg who has kindly given me permission to use it.

My research showed that the temple had been built by the estate’s owner as a memorial to his late wife Lady Mary Montgomerie, who died in 1848. How would she have felt, I thought, if she could have seen how her memorial was being treated? I began to imagine her spirit floating above the woods and gazing mournfully at the scene below, and I later used this image in one of my paintings.

Temples similar to the one at Beauport Park were often built by wealthy landowners as a feature on their land. The fashion in the later 18^th century and early 19^th century was for the ‘picturesque’ in landscape design inspired by painters such as Claude and Poussin, whose paintings often featured distant temples and ruins to give added atmosphere to scenes of classical antiquity.

Pastoral picturesque

The Beauport Park monument follows in the tradition of the pastoral picturesque and its connection with this historic movement makes its restoration and future maintenance even more important.

The owner of the estate, Sir Charles Montolieu Lamb (1785–1860), was an important member of the establishment and held the office of equerry to the royal household. He is buried in the graveyard of the Church in The Woods at Hollington, and his portrait is shown on his gravestone, which is in the form of a large truncated vertical slab.

It is said that he wanted the church, which was in a dilapidated condition, to be demolished and rebuilt on a site nearer his estate. The parishioners, understandably, objected to this idea and eventually funds were found for the church’s restoration.

Horticultural interests

Sir Charles seems to have had horticultural interests, which is evident when one comes across one of the enormous monumental conifers which were planted under his instructions; the largest of these is a 150 foot giant sequoia which is listed as being amongst the highest in the UK.

These trees were a novelty at that time, having only recently been discovered by plant hunters in California, who then brought the seeds back to the UK.

Sequoias, or redwoods as they are called in America, were renamed by the British as Wellingtonias in honour of The Duke of Wellington, who had only recently deceased.

Beauport Park is even more historically important due to the discovery of Roman remains on the estate. Large slag heaps of smelted iron ore were found, as well as evidence of furnaces, called bloomeries, and other items of the Roman era. The scale of the workings show that this site was the third largest source of iron in the Roman Empire.

Roman bath house

In 1967 archaeologists found the remains of a Roman bath house at the edge of the present golf course. Further investigations were carried out by the Channel 4 Time Team which revealed the bath house to be impressively preserved, and their findings were broadcast on their 1999 series.

The site was eventually put up for sale, but a buyer was not found. Perhaps if it had been sold, and with some further investment, the remains could have been further excavated and restored and the site made accessible to the public (subject to the permission of the landowner).

Unfortunately, at present no evidence of the bathouse exists, as the site has been reburied with earth to ensure its future preservation.

Beauport Park subsequently had a few further owners, the most notable of whom was Thomas Brassey, the renowned Victorian builder of railways to whom the house was leased.

A catastrophic fire consumed the house in 1923 and it was rebuilt as a hotel in 1926.

In 2005 Duncan Bannatyne opened a health club on the site and bought the building for use as a hotel in 2007. The remainder of the site was redeveloped as a holiday park and the temple stands at the north edge of this development.

It is fortunate that the estate has been preserved for its present usage, as so much of the historic building stock in the Hastings area has been demolished to allow for redevelopment.

With a bit of imagination, and of course funding, many historic buildings could be converted for other uses and so retained. Inevitably, it all comes down to economics and practicality in the end, but their retention and conversion could provide accommodation which would be a means of easing the present-day housing crisis.

It is vital that our building heritage should not be allowed to fall into decay, as in the case of the Beauport Park temple, but instead, appreciated and cherished so that future generations should have the opportunity to visit and understand better our fascinating local history.

 

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