Bohemia Village Voice

The Dripping Spring

The forerunner of the Dripping Spring was a grocer’s shop and beer house at 35 Tower Road. Number 34, now the saloon bar, was a bootmakers. The beer house became separated in 1892 to become the Dripping Spring and the shop closed in 1899.
In 1916 the landlord, Fred Smith, was called up. He appealed to the Hastings Military Tribunal and explained that he and his wife ran the Dripping Spring alone. He did all the cellar work himself and explained that the heaviest barrel weighed four and a quarter hundredweight [218kg].  His appeal was refused and he was granted an exemption of one month only, before being sent to France. After his departure his wife struggled on with help from the customers but Fred was lucky: he returned from France and remained landlord until 1921.

Unlike many pubs, the Drip stayed open during the Second World War and managed to escape the bombing. In 1950 it was granted a full licence and its eighty-four years of life as a beer house came to an end. The house next door was acquired and its ground floor turned into the saloon bar still in use today. Cyril Pelluet remembers the pub from 1957. “We considered the Dripping Spring a better quality pub. The inside was smarter and husbands and wives went there together.  The Dripping Spring was a bit higher up the social scale.”
In 1992 it became a free house and was known as the New George and Dragon until 1995. In 1995, it was listed as the Dripping Spring in the Good Beer Guide. In 2000, the pub was voted CAMRA Sussex Pub of the Year and also runner-up as National Pub of the Year. It has appeared in the Good Beer Guide almost continually since then.

David is interested in any Hastings & St Leonards pub memories and photographs. David Russell, tel: 200227.

Reproduced from The Pubs of Hastings & St Leonards by kind permission of David Russell.