This is what existed in Hastings town centre where Poundstretcher is now

He writes: Hastings has lost many historic old buildings to developers, not least a hotel that was a landmark in the heart of the town: the Castle Hotel in Wellington Square.

It opened at the bottom of the square in 1818, on a site purchased in December 1815 by the wealthy local traders, the Breeds family. This followed the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815, which sparked a surge in the popularity of Hastings as a fashionable seaside resort.

In 1815 the only buildings in today’s town centre were in parts of Castle Street and Wellington Place. But the Breeds family could see the development potential, and in the following years built the hotel, plus much of Wellington Square and Russell Street. Mark and Thomas Breeds funded the scheme from the large profits they had made from supplying bricks, lime and other building materials for the construction of the Martello Towers in the Hastings area from 1805 to 1808. In the 1820s the Castle Hotel was the second-biggest hotel in Hastings, after the Swan Hotel in the High Street.

Wellington Square was initially called Waterloo Square, but there were fears this might put off French visitors, so the square was later renamed after Lord Wellington, victor at Waterloo.

The 1852 map shows the hotel fronting the bottom of the square, with a big mews behind it stretching down Albert Road to Queens Road, much of which is covered by the Odeon cinema today. In the days before the railways came to Hastings, around 1850, the well-off hotel guests would arrive by horse-power, hence the mews. The York Buildings at the bottom of the map originally had gardens behind them, going up to the mews, and some of the gardens are still on the map. They have now gone, but their name lives on as the name of the narrow lane, York Gardens, immediately behind York Buildings.

The postcard shows Wellington Square (then in St Leonards!) after the Second World War when it was an ‘unofficial’ coach station for buses going out of town. The main bus station at that time was between the town hall and the Cricket Ground, in Queens Road.

By the mid-1960s the Castle Hotel had come to the end of its life, with several better-class rivals in the town. It was demolished in the late 60’s and replaced by what was initially a Tesco supermarket, and is now Poundstretcher.

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