St Leonards-on-Sea is the calm western half of the borough, a resort town planned beside Hastings in the 1820s and absorbed into it later. Most visitors who have done the Old Town and the pier never cross into it, which is exactly why it is worth a day. It is not a second Old Town; it is a different town, laid out on a plan. The day works in either direction: come by train to St Leonards Warrior Square and work back east, or walk from Hastings along the promenade and start at the western end. This guide covers the squares and gardens, the Kings Road shops, the seafront, and what is on this autumn.
James Burton was a London builder who developed large areas of Bloomsbury and the houses around Regent’s Park. In 1827 he bought a stretch of coastland west of Hastings, and the first house — now Crown House at 57 Marina — was finished in 1828. Hastings Museum and Art Gallery calls the result “the first purpose-built seaside resort in the country” on its Burton family page. His son Decimus Burton carried the work on — West Marina, The Lawn, The Uplands and his own cottage at Maze Hill — and later designed the Wellington Arch and the Palm and Temperate Houses at Kew. St Leonards merged with Hastings in time and is now simply the western half of the borough.
Burton set the resort out around green spaces rather than a single seafront strip. St Leonards Gardens, laid out in 1828, was the green heart, sitting in a valley among villas in what the council calls a “unique Regency style”. The surrounding villas, in Regency Gothic and cottage styles, were integral to the landscape rather than a backdrop to it, and Allegria Court, Gloucester Lodge and the Clock House still stand out. Warrior Square filled the plan in during the 1850s to 1870s, developed for housing on the site of Warrior Field. The two gardens carry the story between them: St Leonards Gardens came first, for the resort’s early subscribers, and Warrior Square Gardens followed as the housing spread west.
The seafront walk from Hastings is the best way to arrive. Bottle Alley is the stretch that carries you between the two towns: a 480-metre walkway under the upper promenade, built between November 1933 and May 1934 by Sidney Little, the borough engineer known as the “Concrete King”. It runs on 113 columns opening to the sea, and its concrete panels are set with tens of thousands of pieces of glass. Above it is the open upper promenade; the lower deck gives cover in rain and shade in sun. From the pier end it is a gentle half-hour stroll, though there is no reason to time it. Since 2023 the walkway has had artists in residence, ZEROH — Daniel Hardiker and Neil Hetherington — running installations and community cleaning days, and bottlealley.org lists what is happening in the space.
Warrior Square Gardens cover about 17,300 square metres in three parts: the lower garden, the middle and the Rose Garden. The land was developed for housing in the 1850s to 1870s on what had been Warrior Field, and the gardens opened to the public in 1852. The Hastings and St Leonards News of that time reported band concerts three times a week, but the bandstand itself is long gone, so do not come expecting a summer band. The Queen Victoria statue stands in the gardens, with flower beds, seats and pathways around it. There are two main entrances from Oudenaarde Walk, both with good disabled access; the main garden is flat, and the Rose Garden is wheelchair-accessible from Warrior Square and has sea views. The council’s Warrior Square Gardens page carries the current detail.
St Leonards Gardens is the smaller and older of the two, about 14,000 square metres off Maze Hill, with an ornamental pond of water lilies at its centre. Burton designed it in 1828 for the resort’s wealthy subscribers; Hastings Corporation bought it in 1880 and opened it to the general public, and a Heritage Lottery Fund renovation in 2007 brought it back into shape. The council describes it today as “a tranquil oasis in the Maze Hill area of St Leonards, with views to the sea”, planted for colour through the year with herbaceous plants, shrubs, bulbs and trees, and notes the garden’s undulating topography, which opens views across the site and onto the surrounding architecture. The villas carried the history too: the young Princess Victoria is linked to the gardens, Rider Haggard lived in the North Lodge, and visitors included Rudyard Kipling. On access, the main entrance from Maze Hill has good disabled access and gently sloping paths to just past the pond; the rest of the site has steep slopes and steps.
St Leonards has the calmer western end of the long Hastings–St Leonards strand, the same stretch of coast as Hastings Beach, with fewer people and a slower pace. The promenade here is the double-decker structure you walked through on the way: the upper deck open to the sky, Bottle Alley beneath. The council’s coastline pages cover beach facilities, beach safety, tide tables, dog-on-beach rules and the cliff railways, and they are the live source. Those rules move with the season, and the council is the one that publishes them.
Visit Hastings, the official tourist board, puts the day plainly: take in stylish St Leonards, browse the boutique stores on the Kings Road, wander down to the seafront for refreshments and take in the coastal views. The independent scene centres on the Kings Road and Norman Road area. Names and hours move quickly, so visithastings.co.uk is the place to check current listings rather than trusting any one shop’s old page.
St Leonards Warrior Square is the station to use: Kings Road, TN37 6HL, managed by Southeastern. Visit Hastings puts the London train at around 90 minutes, but live times belong to National Rail or Southeastern, not this page. The station page carries the detail that changes. The ticket office is staffed Monday to Friday 06:00–19:20 and Saturday 08:10–14:50, and closed on Sunday; the station is not continuously staffed, and ticket machines cover the gaps. Step-free access is category B2 — some step-free access to all platforms — and there are no lifts. Facilities include toilets, an accessible toilet, baby changing, a sheltered waiting area, seating, refreshments, CCTV, help points and an induction loop; there is no public Wi-Fi. Parking has 38 spaces and no accessible spaces, and there is bicycle storage and hire.
The autumn programme runs through St Leonards as much as Hastings. Coastal Currents, the independent visual arts festival, runs to 30 September 2026 with exhibitions, open studios and performances — check coastalcurrents.org.uk. Hastings Heritage Open Days Festival finishes 20 September 2026, listed on Visit Hastings; check heritageopendays.org.uk. The St Leonards BIG FLEA is Sunday 20 September 2026 on the Visit Hastings event page, and the BAAM Bottle Alley Art Market runs that same Sunday, 20 September 2026, 10:00–18:00 — check bottlealley.org for later dates.
Hastings Jazz Festival is 3 October 2026 (hastingsflyer.com), Hastings Tap Takeover runs 2–4 October 2026 (hastingstaptakeover.com), and the Hastings Storytelling Festival runs 17–25 October 2026 with the theme “Connections” (18hours.org.uk). Hastings Rocks International Film Festival is 30 October–1 November 2026 at the Electric Palace and Printworks (filmfreeway.com). The Bayeux Around Britain exhibition of Stothard casts from the Bayeux Tapestry runs at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery to 8 November 2026 (hmag.org.uk). Every one of these is the organiser’s date, not a fixed promise, so check the named organiser’s page before you set out.
Public toilets sit on the seafront near Warrior Square Gardens. For beach safety, tide tables and dog rules, the council’s coastline pages are the single source. The two gardens are open parks, and third-party pages that invent closing gates are wrong. If you have only the afternoon, do the walk through Bottle Alley, an hour in Warrior Square Gardens, then the Kings Road shops. When to visit sets the season, walks around Hastings extends the day, and day trips from Hastings points west to Bexhill-on-Sea if you are still going at teatime.