A Wonderful Day Trip To Historic Hastings

We are off on another little historical day trip from London, this time to the town of Hastings!

It took me just under two hours to get there by train and you pull in right in the centre of town. 

Here is a map of the route I took:

Hastings Castle

To begin it was a calf-busting climb up the hill to the ruins of Hastings Castle.

After landing with his army on English soil in 1066, William the Conqueror immediately ordered 3 prefabricated wooden motte and bailey castles to be built to fortify the South coast. One of the three was here at Hastings.

Later that year he went on to defeat Harold Godwinson nearby in the Battle of Hastings and in 1067 the castle was rebuilt in stone.

It then went through various restorations and refortifications in the 12th and early 13th centuries. The cliff collapsed in February 1287 and the wall and the keep fell into the English Channel.

The remains of the castle were excavated in the 1820s and it became a Victorian tourist attraction. An anti-aircraft gun was based here in World War Two and the ruins suffered a fair bit of bomb damage from the Luftwaffe.

In 1951 it was acquired by the Hastings Corporation and can be visited today. I also had a look inside the old dungeons, excavated in the 1870s.

You can find out more about visiting the castle here. 

Into The Old Town

I then walked over West Hill down into the Old Town.

I walked into the old town via Coburg Place; one of the many atmospheric, narrow paths or ‘twittens’ as they are locally known.

You pop out by St Clement’s church. It has origins going back to 1080 but was rebuilt in 1380. 

You will also see a memorial garden, once the site of the Swan Inn, destroyed by a World War Two bomb. It was a historic, local institution with origins going back to at least the early 14th century.

I walked along the High Street which has some quirky antiques shops on it, as well as pubs and bakeries.

You will see A G Hendy and Co, an Edwardian inspired home store. It is housed in a Georgian townhouse, previously used as a soda-bottling shop. 

Another good ‘twitten’ to check out is Sinnock Square.

Some Of The Oldest Houses In Hastings

On All Saints Street you will find some of the oldest houses in Hastings.

The house below dates from the 15th century and is thought to have been home to the mother of the wonderfully named Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell (1650-1707).

As a naval officer he is unfortunately most well known for the circumstances in which he died. In October 1707 he was commanding a fleet of 21 British ships back from the Mediterranean.

He steered his ship and led three others onto the rocks off the coast of the Isles of Scilly. He and around 2000 men are thought to have died, making it one of the worst naval disasters in British history. 

These were given out by fire insurance companies from the late 17th century. If you were a signed up member you would be given a plaque to attach to your house. If you had a fire, the private firefighting team of your insurance company would turn up, check whether you have their plaque, if you did then they would put your fire out for you. 

135 All Saints Street is a creaking old 16th century merchant’s house, opposite the historic Stag Inn. I also enjoyed seeing the ‘Piece of cheese’ house.

Built in the 1870s, it can be found on Starr’s Passage. 

The UK’s Steepest Funicular Railway

I then went to see the East Hill Railway, unfortunately closed at the time of my visit. It was installed in 1902 and is the country’s steepest funicular railway. 

At the bottom of the cliffs is the Rock-a-Nore area of Hastings. The name is thought to come from ‘lyinge to the Mayne Rock against the north’. Here you will find lots of these unusual tall, thin black sheds.

They are apparently unique to Hastings and are known as ‘net shops’ and were used to store fishing gear.

When they were first put up in the early 19th century, the water used to come a lot closer to the cliffs, meaning there was limited space and each fisherman was only allowed a very small space by the Hastings Corporation, hence why they are so tall but narrow.

39 of them have been given Grade II* listing by Historic England, protecting them from being removed or changed. You can read a full history of them here. 

The Fishermen’s Museum

It was then a visit to two small, quirky museums. First up: the Fishermen’s Museum. It opened in 1956 in the former Fisherman’s Church of St Nicholas, a chapel that served the fishing community from 1854. 

You can see various items and exhibits relating to Hastings’ maritime and fishing history. In the centre is an actual boat: the last Hastings’ sailing lugger Enterprise built in 1912. 

I particularly enjoyed learning about the ‘Winkle Club’. It was formed by fishermen here in Hastings in 1900 to raise money for the poor families of the town.

Still going today, it has some interesting rules for its members. Every member must carry around a winkle at all times which they must reveal if challenged to ‘winkle up’. If they cannot, then they have to pay a fine to the charity. You can read about the rules here. 

This is the winkle suit of ‘Slogger’ Hoad, the ‘winkle king’ from the 1960s. The suit is apparently made from 9626 winkle shells and took 6 months to make. It feels very reminiscent of the pearly kings and queens of East London.

The Shipwreck Museum And A Chunk Of Roman London

I then visited the nearby Shipwreck Museum.

It has over 3000 items on display, many salvaged from shipwrecks. The collections are mostly from two shipwrecks from the English Channel, the 17th century warship Anne, part of Charles II’s Restoration navy and The Amsterdam, an 18th century Dutch East Indiaman.

They also have a section of the old wooden, Roman London Bridge dating from around 85AD.

Both museums are free but donations are encouraged to help them stay open and accessible.

Ye Olde Pump House

I then walked along the winding, pedestrianised George Street, past the Ye Olde Pump House pub.

Despite it looking very old it has been a pub since only 1956, when it was ‘Tudorised’. Many of the timbers on the outside were added, giving it this almost Disneyland look to it. Some of the original structure of the building does however date back to the 17th century. 

Hastings Museum and Art Gallery 

I finished the day by walking along the beachfront, past the pier constructed in 1872, before looping back inland to go to the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

The museum was founded in 1890 and moved into this 1920s mansion in 1927.

The building was then extended in 1932 to house the incredible ‘Durbar Hall’.

The Durbar Hall was originally created in 1886 as part of an ‘Indian Palace’ for the Indian and Colonial Exhibition of that year in South Kensington. After the exhibition, parts were bought by the 1st Earl of Brassey who then donated it to the museum in 1919. 

Inside the museum you can learn all about the history of Hastings but there are also artefacts from all over the world. They were largely donated by the Brassey family but there are also items collected by Hastings residents, such as Archebald Stansfeld Belaney, who was brought up in Hastings in the late 1800s and ended up living in North America, taking on the Indigenous persona of ‘Grey Owl’. 

Homeward Bound Via A Bakery

It was then back on the train to London after a brilliant day. I also, by the way, had a really good fish and chips for lunch at Maggie’s (nice big portion!) and an excellent pastry from the 1066 bakery. 

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