HASTINGS CASTLE
A fragment of the castle alone remains, grimly clinging to the edge of the cliff.
(See page 13)
As we stroll about the streets of Hastings of to-day, it is difficult, nay, it is impossible, to conjure up the past, to people these hills and dales with the ghosts of days long since gone. True, there is the Castle ruin, grimly clinging to the edge of the cliff; else there is little but aggressive modernity. Such haven as there is now gives cause rather for ridicule than pride. Few, standing at the Albert Memorial, could ever conceive that here in this Priory valley was at one time the great Port, protected on the east by the Castle hill, on the west by the White Rock, and flushed from the north by the Old Roar River. Well might our old Sussex poet, James Howell, sing:
"Thou old sea-town, crouching beneath the rocks
Like a strong lion waiting for his prey!
Where are thy river, harbour, and the docks
In which the navy of Old England lay?
Why didst thou slumber, when in Pevensey Bay
The Normans' mighty host profaned our soil,
When thou, the Cinque-Port Queen, didst hold the key
Which locked the sea-gates of this freedom-isle?"
Who, standing towards the south of the old town, where now are those black, bill-plastered structures famed as "the fishermen's huts", could call to mind a great wall with a gate and portcullis defending the town on the seaward side? Yet a writer as late as 1828 could say: "Hastings was formerly defended, towards the sea, by a wall, which extended from the castle cliff across the hollow in which the town lies, to the east cliff.... A very small portion of this wall still exists, and may be traced near the Bourne's mouth, where there was a portcullis or gate; a considerable part of it is stated to have remained about forty years since." (William Herbert, the unacknowledged author of "The History and Antiquities of the Town and Port of Hastings", by W. G. Moss, draughtsman to H.R.H the Duke of Cambridge.)