The Stag Carnival Club

The Stag Carnival Club was started in the Early nineties by a group of regulars and friends from the Stag Inn, All Saints Street, Hastings.

The idea of starting a club whose sole purpose was to produce Carnival Floats was inspired by the Carnival Clubs of Somerset. These Clubs have produced enormous, awe inspiring mechanized and illuminated floats for the autumn night-time carnivals of the West Country for decades.

From the start the Stag Carnival Club has been ambitious and succesful - every float bar one that they have produced has won a prize in Hastings Old Town Carnival.

The Club has a membership of approximately forty people all of whom contribute in some way to the creation of the floats. The costs are largely met by subscriptions from the members and other fund raising activities such as raffles, book sales etc.

At the outset the club was fortunate to receive a donation from Frank Dicker of All Saints Street of a large bailing trailer that had previously been used for building floats but had fallen into disrepair. Frank also supplied the club with the facility of a barn in which to restore the trailer and build the first float.

After the first two years when the float was built undercover, the construction of the float has taken place in the open air, although for the last few years the Club has a had a permanent site in a field near the Fairlight Lodge Hotel. Given the nature of the summer climate in this country building outside has nearly resulted in disaster on a number of occasions, but this has also led to the construction of floats that can withstand less than ideal conditions which has proved a bonus when taking the float to Autumn processions such as Staplecross or Rye.