We will be on the move soon from our present interim house in Harold Road to our forever home further up the valley where we can look straight down to the sunlight on the sparkly sea…. one of the reasons we moved to Hastings from Birmingham.
While idly trawling Google about our new locality we discovered that our new house is one of a small cluster built on the site of Clive Vale House, formerly Clive Vale Farm. In 1852 Edward Lear lodged at Clive Vale Farm, and Holman Hunt came to join him. At the house, Holman Hunt painted one of his best known works, ‘Our English Coasts or Strayed Sheep’ (see below), along with ‘Fairlight Downs, Sunlight on the Sea’, and the flowers round the bottom of the ‘Light of the World’. Holman Hunt and Lear were visited at Clive Vale by Millais and other Pre-Raphaelite frequenters of Hastings.
What would we do without Google? More house-work and gardening, for sure. Another riveting thing it threw out was the Harold Hotel and Temperance Tea garden, on former Clive Vale farm land at Pinders Shaw. Apparently there was a large ground set aside for open-air dancing….. What an energetic lot those Victorians were….
Less of this. Tomorrow we go back to Birmingham for a couple of days to show our grand-daughter a good time for the Easter holidays…..
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