How ‘DFLs’ saved St Leonards

Almost 30 years ago, my journalistic career began in the faded seaside town of St Leonards-on-Sea, where I spent six months undertaking a crash course in shorthand, typing and all the basic skills of local paper reportage. With no previous experience of just how dismal an out-of-season holiday town could be, my spirits were high on the trip down the A21 – an extended coastal sojourn sounded like fun.

The reality of St Leonards in the early 1990s brought me back down to earth with a bump. This once splendid Regency resort – created by the team which had designed London’s Bloomsbury and Regent’s Park – was a wasteland. 

Its white stucco townhouses were crumbling. Most cafes and restaurants closed during winter so there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. My fellow residents were a mix of addicts and homeless, who had washed up at the coast as a result of the Care in the Community drive of the 1980s, and sad-looking retirees who had clearly also had their dreams of fun by the seaside shattered.