Augusta Victoria College
A freakish quirk of 1930s British education
Walking around 1930s Bexhill, you might have seen schoolgirls stepping out in blue uniforms outwardly not much different to the town’s other schools. Apart from a school badge proudly adorned with the Nazi swastika.
In the years before WW2, Bexhill hosted several private schools –but none now seem more chillingly unexpected than the one that occupied a site on Dorset Road (now converted to a block of flats), dedicated to providing schooling for the daughters of the Nazi elite.
Founded by one Frau Helena Rocholl – with German baroness Pia von Korff as her assistant – the school began accepting its girl pupils in 1932. From then, right up until the outbreak of war in 1939, the College prepared around two dozen students aged 16-21 each year for the Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English.
More importantly, though, it served as a Swiss-style finishing school to teach British social graces to pupils including Isa von Bergen, daughter of Hitler’s envoy to the Vatican, and Bettina von Ribbentrop, daughter of Hitler’s Foreign Minister.
It seems remarkable today that contemporary accounts suggest Bexhill was fairly tolerant of the College’s German staff and pupils. Even as Britain prepared for war in 1939, the school was celebrating Hitler’s birthday on 20 April by hoisting a swastika flag and having the girls sing National Socialist songs. It wasn’t until 26 August 1939 that the College finally closed and its girls fled home – around a week before Britain declared war on Germany.
The only surviving examples of the school blazer, badge and prospectus were donated as the centrepiece of a display at Bexhill Museum by English au pair Mollie Hickie, who worked at the College from 1935 to 1939. A dramatised version of the school’s story, meanwhile, inspired a film - Six Minutes to Midnight – produced by Bexhill-born Hollywood star Eddie Izzard.
Address Bexhill Museum, 47 Egerton Road, Bexhill-on-Sea TN39 3HL, bexhillmuseum.org.uk | Getting there Train to Bexhill station, then a 20 minutes’ walk | Hours Tue–Sun 11am–4pm | Tip The Sovereign Light Cafe (see Facebook) celebrated in a song by global rock stars Keane is just a few hundred metres from the museum on the seafront West Parade.
Durbar Hall
A dazzling capturing of distant lands and people
Though far less well-known than the extravagant Royal Pavilion an hour along the coast in Brighton, Durbar Hall is in its own way just as dazzling a slice of exotic wonderment set unexpectedly on the English south coast.
What you see today is only part of a full-sized reproduction of an Indian palace made for the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition held in London. Durbar Hall made up the upper storey, and was used at the time to host official receptions for the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII).
Its jaw-dropping panoply of intricate wood-carved features - made from teak, Himalayan cedar and sheesham (Indian rosewood) – were designed by Caspar Purdon Clarke, a noted authority on Indian art, with the work carried out over nine months by Muhammad Baksh and Muhammad Juma, two skilled carvers from India’s West Punjab.
At the close of the Exhibition, the structure was acquired by the first Lord Brassey, along with a triple arch from Lahore which now forms the Hall’s entrance inside the main Museum. As well as a showy smoking room for his London house, the Hall also provided a dramatic backdrop to an incredible collection of ethnographic objects acquired by his wife Anna on a series of explorations of 19th century Oceania and Asia.
Both the Durbar Hall and the collection were bequeathed to the town of Hastings by the second Lord Brassey in 1919, and re-erected inside the Museum in 1931. Nearly a century later, its panoply of objects from India, the Far East and Oceania is as eye-opening today as it must have seemed to Victorian visitors, be it a feathered chieftain’s cloak from Hawaii, 1500-year-old Chinese ceramics or eerie skulls from Papa New Guinea.
Be sure to explore the adjoining upper level gallery featuring First Nation items from North America – plus the incredible story of the Hastings man who became a tribal leader called Grey Owl.
Address Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, John’s Place, Bohemia Road, Hastings TN34 1ET, hmag.org.uk | Getting there Train to Hastings station, then a 20 minutes’ walk | Hours Tue–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 11am–4.30pm | Tip You can read vivid firstperson accounts of the incredible 19th century explorations of Annie, Lady Brassey in her 1878 book A Voyage in the ‘Sunbeam’.
Logie Baird Memorials
How Hastings became the birthplace of television
TV has changed the way people live, and the history books will tell you that its first public demonstration took place in London on January 26, 1926. But the key experiments leading up to that world-changing event actually took place in a workshop in Hastings’ Queens Arcade.
A series of memorials inside the arcade detail that remarkable story. Baird moved to Hastings in 1922 for its health-boosting sea air, before beginning to experiment with the technology for ‘seeing by wireless’. And in late February or early March of 1923, he made his first major breakthrough by generating the first images of his new-fangled ‘tele-vision’ system. In 1924, he was able to transmit moving silhouettes of a Maltese cross and letters of the alphabet – all vital steps leading to the London transmissions.
Like many inventors, Baird was also a master of making do with what he could find in terms of equipment – an ability that led to him being described as “limited in resources but unlimited in ingenuity”. This saw Baird set about his pioneering work on TV transmission using items including a hatbox, scissors, darning needles, bicycle light lenses, a tea chest, sealing wax and glue! Scanning discs were made out of cardboard - with mountings made from scrap timber, and motors rescued from the scrap heap.
As can happen when creating untried new technology, however, sometimes things didn’t go smoothly. One of the arcade boards, for example, reprints a July 1924 story from the Hastings and St Leonards Observer detailing an explosion in Baird’s workshop caused by a short circuit that gave him a 1200V electric shock. This left the inventor “lying helpless on the floor”, much shaken and with badly burned hands.
To make things worse, the accident led to Baird being evicted from the premises by his landlord! Let’s be glad his genius came with plenty of resilience.
Address 10 Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1PA, facebook.com/queensarcadetraders | Getting there A 10 minutes’ walk from Hastings train station | Hours During arcade hours: Mon–Sat 8am–5pm | Tip To complete the local Logie Baird trail, a blue plaque adorns nearby 21 Linton Crescent (just behind Hastings railway station).
Stella Dore Gallery
Art beacon from key Banksy collaborator
Just who Banksy is remains one of the modern art world’s great secrets, but if you want to meet one of the key figures in his early career then come and say hello to Steph Warren in the gallery she opened on St Leonards’ super-cool Norman Road back in 2018, selling brilliant radical T-shirts and objects alongside original art.
Born and bred in Hastings, Steph Warren became a pivotal figure in Banksy’s rise when she ran his pioneering Pictures on Walls print studio in London’s Shoreditch during the early 2000s – an operation that also spotlit other noted artists including Space Invader, David Shrigley and Jamie Hewlett. She also provided the model for Banksy’s maid figure in his iconic ‘Sweep It Under The Carpet’ mural, stencilled on a London wall in 2006.
An outstanding and powerful artist in her own right – as well as curator and mural facilitator - Warren opened the first iteration of her Stella Dore Gallery in 2007 at the Truman Brewery in London’s Brick Lane, before the 2008 financial crash prompted a move back to Hastings, where she worked with typography artist Ben Eine, painting large scale murals and assisting exhibitions in Europe and the US.
Warren is now acknowledged as one of the UK’s leading authorities on the graffiti and street art movement, while Stella Dore has shown artists including Sara Pope, Dotmasters, Pablo Allison, Shuby, Dave Buonaguidi and Abraham.O. The gallery complements Warren’s ongoing solo and collaborative mural work around Hastings as well as in London.
Warren’s time as a young woman at the heart of a secretive and often chaotic street art operation was chronicled in the 2023 BBC Radio 4 series The Banksy Story. Talking to the Get Hastings blog (gethastings.com), Warren described her gallery as: “A riot of colour, and a true art solace which is so much more than its aesthetics if you look underneath”.
Address 64 Norman Road, Saint Leonards-on-Sea TN38 0EJ | Getting there A 10 minutes’ walk from Saint Leonards Warrior Square train station | Hours Opening times vary but generally Thu–Sat 11am–5pm. Contact gallery for private appointments outside these times. | Tip One of Warren’s collaborative community murals – entitled One Hastings, Many Voices – adorns the seafront steps in front of nearby Warrior Square.
Merchant & Mills
Globally celebrated beacon for clothes makers
You might not expect a small store in a small town to achieve worldwide renown, but this one-stop shop for clothes makers and sewers is it. Think superb fabrics from around the world, a dazzling array of sought-after sewing patterns, plus what the shop describes as “notions & ideas”.
For many years the whole operation – warehouse, studio and shop - was crammed into one section of what had been a former toy factory. But a re-design has now created a softly lit, expansive space to show off a colourful treasure trove of cloths demanding to be caressed, along with neat rows of patterns and sewing paraphernalia. Stairs lead up to a studio that hosts classes and creative retreats.
The wonderful fabrics on display include myriad versions of cotton and linen, including styles that may be familiar only to dedicated clothes makers, such as ikat, jamdani and poplin. The array of sewing accessories ranges from “assorted betweens” and “baby bow scissors” to “long darners” and “black bulb pins”.
The shop’s array of patterns (available in both paper and PDF versions) are a key draw for the shop’s global fan base – my sister-in-law in New Zealand is one devotee. Divided into degree of difficulty, the shop’s website – and fabulous staff – offer a host of “pattern hacks” to ease any maker stresses. Inclusivity in sizing reigns, with patterns available from UK 6—28.
Fabric is overwhelmingly natural organic fibre, including so-called deadstock - excess fabric from fashion designers, film sets and mills that would otherwise end up in landfill. The company works with mills that prioritise ethical employment practices in terms of pay and safety – with check-up visits every year.
In 2021, the company purchased and renovated a fine 1890s Victorian house - former home of the headmaster of Rye Grammar School – to host sewing retreats just a stone’s throw from the shop.
Address 14a Tower Street, Rye TN31 7AT, merchantandmills.com | Getting there 10 minutes’ walk from Rye train station | Hours Wed–Fri noon–5pm, Sat & Sun 10am–5pm | Tip Landgate Bistro (5/6 Landgate, Rye TN31 7LH; landgatebistro.co.uk) is an excellent choice for a gourmet lunch, carved from old Georgian shops just a few doors away from Merchant & Mills.