The End of 'The Four Courts'

Some time in the near future, The 'four courts' in Stonehouse Drive, St. Leonards, will be demolished. This is an important event in terms of the culture and heritage of Hastings and St Leonards. But why should we care ?

These tower blocks, providing nearly 400 households, stand sixteen stories high and ‘can be seen for miles’ as the saying goes. They were built in 1963 and were originally referred to locally as 'The Wimpey Towers', presumably after the housebuilder of the same name. They went on to be named after four 20^th century politicians, two British and two American, perhaps signifying this countries obsession with a perceived 'special relationship' with the US : Bevin, Churchill, Roosevelt and Kennedy. The tower blocks are owned by Southern Housing a social housing provider, who have not yet applied to the local authority, Hastings Borough Council, for permission to demolish, but are already consulting local residents about the intended process.

It is not known yet what will replace these towers. They sit on a sizeable parcel of land with a lot of green amenity space, car parking and community buildings. The parcel of land is much larger of course than the foot print occupied by the towers themselves so you might be forgiven for assuming that much higher density housing will occupy the sight in the future. Indeed if you look at some Inner London boroughs such as Lewisham this process has been happening for the best part of a decade. The tragedy of this is that communities can sometimes be erased and if like me, you feel that part of us 'becomes' forever connected to the places we lived in for any appreciable amount of time, a quiet tragedy seems to occur.

The first and most obvious concern is the potential loss of amenity space. There is pressure on housing supply and this must be addressed but do we miss something by replacing, grass, community play spaces, small wooded copses, and community halls with more housing ? is the overall affect a negative ? I simply ask the question so that we can consider it. At the time of writing there are a number of community organisations, such as 'four courts connect' who do outstanding work with residents and there is a question to be raised about what will become of these community organisations.

The issue of upmost importance however, I would argue, is what will become of those families, extended families and social networks once the built environment which facilitated them is gone. Wherever these families and networks go there must be a tangible record made of their existence, function and achievement. Imagine the life stories, the shared experiences of joy, pain, sorrow and fulfilment deposited in the bricks and steel of the towers. Psycho - Geographers must be incentivised to make films and take many photographs and writers and journalists must put on record the stories of over half a century of life in these Hollington towers.

Most importantly people must be looked after and their stories heard and listened to. Their hopes and fears for the future and their feelings about legacy have to be engaged with, acted upon and remembered.