Sidney Little - Looking back to the future

Having been born in Hastings and lived here all my life, I have seen the destruction that has taken place throughout the town, projects that the past Borough Engineer and Water Engineer Sidney Little built, this apart from other things drove me to research the great man and eventually write about his great works.

I am what one might call an unknown author (well up to now that is)! I first took an immense interest in his work I suppose when I first visited the Bathing Pool prior to it's demolition. I made enquiries as to whether anyone else had written about him, I drew a complete blank, this would have been something like 12 years ago. It would have been in either 1999 or 2000 when I started to put pen to paper, it was so long ago I've forgotten! But pen to paper it went, after some 2 years another project took precedence over writing the book, this was consequently shelved for about another 2 years.
Again the book was resurrected in 2004, a real effort went into researching all the material needed, this continued yet again for a further 2 years, when again the book was put aside due to moving house.

When we had settled into our new abode many things were placed in front of me as a priority rather than the book, so the old story started all over. It wasn't until 2009 before a serious start was put into finishing the book. A year later we thought that the book was more or less ready for printing when! we read the book from cover to cover to find to our surprise that many items were in the wrong place and a major article was missing completely! This was put down to changing computers after the move and a different system was used, hence we lost some information in the transfer. It now took an another 10 months of hard research here in Hastings and Lewes to capture all the missing information, and to put all the chapters into their correct sequences. It has been a little over 10 years in the making, and many projects listed in the book that he had planned were never to be found on record, as they had either been destroyed when Hastings Council moved their offices from Wellington Square to Menzies Road Silverhill, or when they were deposited at Lewes archives, and were destroyed there in their depository when the river flooded Lewes; many important documents were transferred into pulp!

Many articles in the book are actual statements made at the time from Council minutes, these had to be included as this is one section one could not compose yourself, but these do make very interesting reading.

I have to add that, back in 1959 - 1961 just prior to his death, I had the pleasure to meet up with Sidney Little nearly every Saturday morning, as the firm I worked for, the boss was a Councillor, and a powerful one at that! Sidney Little would come into the shop where I was to show him into the governors office. It was a quick 'Good Morning Sir' and on his way out 'Good Bye Sir'! My only wish now is, that I might have twigged on to who this person really was, as I would have liked to have question him for hours on his work. But alas that wasn't to be, as at that time he was just another important client to see the Boss! and I valued my job.

The book has 272 pages with over 100 pictures, many of which the public have never seen before. The majority are from my own private collection, but there are some that have been credited for from other sources.

I do hope that those who buy a copy of the book will see both sides of Sidney Little, as he has always been given bad press in the past, for what he not only done to Hastings, but his genius imagination to what he would have liked to do in his visions to make Hastings a town beyond all others.

We have to give praise to a man that brought such skills to Hastings, whereby he changed many parts of the borough for ever, but it is with great sadness to see so many of his projects being destroyed at a rapid rate of knots today, in preference to building some ultra modern glass fronted blocks that stick out like sore thumbs everywhere.

Richard Pollard

July 2011, priced at £14.99
ISBN 978-0-9569366-0-8

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