34 



HA RD WICKE' S SCIENCE- G OSSJP. 



appear the rolling, well-wooded hills of Hastings 

 Sand around Ore and Hollington. 



As we stand on the edge of the prehistoric fortress, 

 and, surveying the sheltered valleys on each side, 

 remember that in addition to dry sandy soil and a 

 little stream in both, there was also an excellent 

 natural harbour in one of them, from some very an- 

 cient prehistoric period down to the twelfth century, 

 it becomes evident that Hastings must have been the 

 site of a town from a very ancient date — a date 

 compared with which the landing of Julius Cresar is 

 but a modern event. That we find no mention of 

 Hastings as a' place of importance during the Roman 

 Occupation is only what might be expected. For 

 we must not forget that Anderida (or Pevensey), 

 which certainly was a Roman port, must have once 

 possessed a very much more extensive harbour than 

 that of Hastings, and as the two places are only 

 eleven or twelve miles apart, if Anderida was a kind 

 of Roman Portsmouth, Hastings is very unlikely to 

 have held any equivalent rank. 



But it also appears that, at a later date, the east- 

 ward drift of the shingle in the English Channel had 

 injured the more westerly harbour of Pevensey before 

 it had begun to damage that of Hastings. This is 

 evident from the fact that, shortly after the Norman 

 Conquest, Hastings became the Premier Cinque 

 Port, while Pevensey's importance had been so much 

 reduced that it figures simply as a " Corporate 

 Member" of Hastings, its head port. William the 

 Conqueror is said, by some historians, to have landed 

 at Pevensey ; by others, at Bulverhithe.* It appears 

 to me that all probability is in favour of the latter 

 spot. For to have disembarked at Pevensey would 

 have meant the landing of the Norman army at a 

 spot separated from the higher and drier ground 

 around Battle and Hastings, by a breadth of three 

 miles or more of marsh and water. The exact pro- 

 portions of marsh and water at that time cannot be 

 ascertained, but neither could have been desirable. 

 Then, as just noted, the harbour at Pevensey had 

 much degenerated in the eleventh century, a fact 

 which must have been known to the wary and saga- 

 cious William. But the haven at Bulverhithe, only 

 two or three miles west of Hastings, began to de- 

 teriorate about the same time as that of Hastings, 

 and was probably in a better condition than Fevensey 

 Harbour in the year 1066 ; and Bulverhithe was 

 not separated by swamps from the higher ground on 

 which the subsequent movements took place. 



The decline of Hastings seems to have begun very 

 soon after the Norman Conquest, for in the time of 

 Henry II., Rye and Winchelsea were practically 

 added to the Cinque Ports, to " complete the num- 

 ber of the twenty Hastings ships."t I have already 

 mentioned that the harbour which gave Hastings its 



* The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle leaves this point uncertain. 

 t "The Cinque Ports" (Historic Towns Series), p. 70, by 

 Professor Montagu Burrows. 



position as a port during the reign of the] Norman 

 kings was in the valley west of the Castle, commonly 

 called the Priory Valley. Its former position may 

 easily be detected in the present day. At White 

 Rock Place on the west, and at the Castle Hill east- 

 ward, the cliffs come close to the beach. Between 

 the spots just named, there is a broad, flat shingle- 

 covered area, occupied by Carlisle Parade, Robertson 

 Street, Trinity Church, the Memorial Clock-tower, 

 etc. The streets which diverge from the Clock- 

 tower in a north-easterly or north-westerly direction 

 begin to rise at a very short distance from that monu- 

 ment, the rise in the ground marking the limits of 

 the shingle flat. But if we go due north of the Clock- 

 tower to the cricket-ground, we enter an open space 

 of six acres,'a few feet below the level of the shingle 

 flat, and see at once that we are standing on the site 

 of the silted-up ancient harbour of the Premier Cinque 

 Port. The broad shingle flat southward must have 

 covered a considerable breadth of ground soon after 

 the Conquest ; for on it a Priory of Austin Canons 

 was founded in the reign of Richard I., and dedicated 

 to the Holy Trinity, from which it would seem that 

 at that time the shingle was considered to be a per- 

 manent addition to the land. But we learn, that in 

 consequence of the gradual encroachments of the sea, 

 the Priory buildings were inundated and their inmates 

 compelled to abandon them. Sir John Pelham, how- 

 ever, gave them lands at Warbleton, near Heathfield, 

 to which they retired in the reign of Henry IV. No 

 doubt, a long period in which the deposition of shingle 

 had been slow and gradual was succeeded by others 

 of alternating gain and loss of land, the former, on 

 the whole, predominating. The effect of the action 

 of the sea on the coast is, speaking generally, to 

 reduce the prominence of promontories, and to fill up 

 bays with silt and shingle. But a result of storms is 

 occasionally the sweeping away of large quantities 

 of shingle from a spot where it has been gradually 

 accumulating, and its deposition elsewhere. The 

 material thus removed is, 'however, usually soon 

 replaced by fresh deposits from the same quarter. 



The history of any considerable breadth of coast 

 is sure to offer some striking examples of the changes 

 which may be suddenly produced after a long period 

 of comparative quiescence. For example, the old 

 ordnance map of the coast of West Hampshire and 

 East Dorset, on which the work of the Geological 

 Survey has been done, shows the mouth of Christ- 

 church Harbour as nearly the same distance from 

 Hengistbury Head, on the south, as from the land 

 on the northern flank of the harbour. But in 18S0, 

 owing, I believe, to the (then) recent removal of 

 masses of ironstone from Hengistbury Head, I saw 

 that shingle had come round the promontory in such 

 abundance as to deflect the mouth of the harbour 

 about a mile and a half eastward. In iSSS, the 

 mouth was almost in the position it had occupied 

 when the map was made, storms having combined 



