Southwater Area Residents Association

History
The history of The Glen from the mid-19th century has been covered by R Downer (2001) in Woodland Vale: our shrinking valley. Essentially the area was mixed Wealden farmland and woodland until the arrival of the railway, following which rapid expansion of St Leonards took place.

The woodland of The Glen is marked on the oldest available maps of the area dating from the early 19th century and is clearly shown in the map in Ross (1843). The large scale Ordnance Survey map of 1873 shows the whole of the western side of Woodland Vale still under trees, as well as the spring that rises at the base of the western bank of The Glen.

Downer remarks that the development of St Leonards "made a comprehensive drainage system a necessity. Springs and streams had to be culverted and one of the main drainage channels lies deep below the floor of Woodland Vale. The occasional appearance of a shallow pool towards the lower end of the valley could be attributed to overflow outlets from this. The drainage water was released into the sea through an out-flow situated approximately at the bottom of London Road and referred to as Warrior Gate Waters". Downer further comments that attempts to build inside The Glen "have so far been thwarted by the existance of a drainage channel below".

Again it is clear from old maps that a stream ran the full length of Woodland Vale and its dry bed could still be seen at the northern end of The Glen. Although this was put underground, the springs at the base of the sandstone continued to supply pure water which could not drain through the underlying Wadhurst Clay and this created the wetland in the centre of the site. This unusual combination of circumstances allowed a number of plants and insects to continue to flourish in the spring-fed area which might well have disappeared, due to the pollutants it would have brought with it, if the Woodland Vale stream had continued to flow above ground.

In housing development in the 1930s the area around The Glen became more or less fully developed and there had been little further building since then. From that time The Glen had continued to be visited as a quiet, green recreation area by local residents, although this had delcined as many would-be users no longer felt safe there.

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Southwater, just north of Warrior Square station, is an area buzzing with regeneration. Southwater Area Residents Association (SARA), is determined the area should regenerate further through creative development, better community networks and a brighter physical environment.

To help achieve all this SARA invited the Ore based ONE-TWO-ONE art and architecture network to lead a project set within Southwater's network of roads:
Woodland Vale Road, Southwater Road, De Cham Road and Chapel Park Road; it became the aptly named Up The Road and Round The Corner.

The steering group working alongside ONE-TWO-ONE and Hastings Borough Council's Public Art Officer secured Arts Council funding for phase one of a two stage project.
The project brief, set out by SARA was to forge a visible identity for the Southwater Renewal area. Artists and architects through a process of creative consultation, worked closely with residents on a range of architectural pieces for the landscape.

Lots of ideas were tested out from a cross-section of the community through three teams known as 'urban residencies'. The ONE-TWO -ONE team also worked with students from Hastings College of Arts and Technology, London Metropolitan University and children from a local primary school.

These urban residencies were on show during the St Leonards Festival in July 2006 in Warrior Square Gardens. A specially commissioned Church Peal, Southwater Surprise Minor, started the festival. The 40 minute bell peal was composed for SARA by Alan Pink, Captain of Christchurch Tower and was rung by the Christchurch Bell Ringers. A day will be set aside each year to ring the Southwater Peal.

A Design Ideas workshop took place in August at the Chapel Park On Line Centre. To see the outcomes of this workshop or to listen to the developing oral archive log on to the website www.onetwoone.org.uk

To help Southwater Area Residents Association to create a useful web page for our area, we would welcome your ideas and views.