Most inhabitants left gradually and to a degree willingly during 1835, with no real evidence of any forced evictions by the Crown. Most people went on to carry on their trades elsewhere, absorbed into wider Hastings, St Leonards or moved along the coast.
I hadn’t expected to find so many separate events that led to the demise of the America Ground. For example the storm that destroyed a large number of the seaward homes. This seems to have done just as much damage to the community as the imminent threat of eviction by The Crown.
lyrics
Eviction 4/4, Eb, 90bpm
Well they’d blown up the white rock headland side by the end of ’34
Then they dug out a brand new coastal road, ran it right through Anne’s front door
They started running four-horse buses across town several times a day
Nobody needs an old ropemaker when the world turns a different way
In October there was a heavy old storm hand in hand with a twelve foot tide
When it took down twenty four seafront homes, we took it as a sign
As the navy beat down the free trade, the fisherman’s life got worse
More and more good men came home dead and the empty shed was a curse
CHORUS
So it’s not an eviction
Not like what I imagined, anyhow
More like a river redirected
And we all flow down and down
One by one warehouses closed and the alley lost the night-time scene
Down where we used to drink and sing, it turned back into an in-between
I don’t know where Tom Page and John Prior went in that summer of ’35
But the new Poor Law was a devil, so maybe in the workhouse if they survived
We moved down the coast to St Leonard’s, to work on Mr Burton’s town
We took our buildings on our backs, put ‘em back up on his new ground
Everything I owned in a wooden cart, dragged by the kids and wife
Burnt that flag we’d carried so high, left The America Ground behind
CHORUS
So it’s not an eviction
Not like what I imagined, anyhow
More like a river redirected
And we all flow down and down
Now I walked down there yesterday – it’s been a whole ten years
Still empty and abandoned as that day we all got cleared
No, they never even used the land for nothing, left it all alone
I heard some people calling it the desert, but it used to be home.
CHORUS
So it’s not an eviction
Not like what I imagined, anyhow
More like a river redirected
And we all flow down and down
So it’s not an eviction
Not like what I imagined, anyway
More like a river redirected
And we all flow away
flow away
flow away
flow away
flow away
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