Where the sandstone ridge of the High Weald tumbles to English Channel, Hastings may be a working fishing port, Victorian resort and a historic settlement.
Hastings was one among a Medieval alliance of coastal towns referred to as the Cinque Ports, and features a gorgeous old town during a valley against the rocky East and West Hills.
The town gave its name to the Battle of Hastings, the foremost crucial event in English history when William of Normandy defeated the Anglo-Saxon pretender to the throne Harold Godwinson to start the Norman Conquest .
The battlefield and its abbey are only quarter-hour by road or train, while there’s an award-winning pier, museums, art galleries and light-hearted family attractions to stay you in town for a minimum of each day .
1. Hastings Old Town
The wonderfully quaint old quarter, in Hastings’ easternmost valley follows a comfortable Medieval layout and has remnants of a wall raised within the 14th century during the 100 Years’ War.
Along the main street and intersecting alleys are half-timbered houses and Georgian facades that conceal much older buildings.
These hold antiques shops, quirky one-off boutiques, historic inns, galleries, cafes and seafood restaurants.
There’s always something happening in summer, just like the Seafood and Wine Festival, or the normal Jack within the Green.
By the water is that the Stade harbour, which we’ll mention in additional detail later.
But along Rock-a-Nore Road stand tall, black wooden huts, which are “net shops”, going back to the 19th century and providing weatherproof storage for nets and other tackle .
Buffet catering service Hastings
2. Battle Abbey
15 Best Things to try to to in Hastings (East Sussex, England)
Where the sandstone ridge of the High Weald tumbles to English Channel, Hastings may be a working fishing port, Victorian resort and a historic settlement.
Hastings was one among a Medieval alliance of coastal towns referred to as the Cinque Ports, and features a gorgeous old town during a valley against the rocky East and West Hills.
The town gave its name to the Battle of Hastings, the foremost crucial event in English history when William of Normandy defeated the Anglo-Saxon pretender to the throne Harold Godwinson to start the Norman Conquest .
The battlefield and its abbey are only quarter-hour by road or train, while there’s an award-winning pier, museums, art galleries and light-hearted family attractions to stay you in town for a minimum of each day .
3. Alexandra Park
Meandering bent Hastings’ suburbs from the town centre, the 109-acre Alexandra Park features a linear design laid call at the 1870s by Robert Marnock, one among the leading landscapers of the day.
This park was given a multimillion pound regeneration within the early 2000s and since then has become an annual winner of the Green Flag Award.
The lower section has formal gardens around reservoirs, while the more northern part is natural and wooded.
Alexandra Park has an exceptionally rich collection of trees, a cafe, an adventure playground and a bandstand used for concerts in summer.
Youngsters also will love the miniature railway at the north end of the park.
4. Hastings Country Park
A great thing about Hastings is that you simply can depart on foot and be in protected countryside within minutes.
The Hastings Country Park is at the southernmost point of the High Weald Area of Natural Beauty, and has 660 acres of ancient woodland, cliffs and heathland.
The scene of a Bronze Age fort, this land has seen act since the Palaeolithic Age, and therefore the Celts, Romans and Saxons all left their mark.
A feature of the park is its glens, sandstone valleys densely wooded and with beds of gorse shrub, also as rare mosses, liverworts and lichens.
Fulmars, peregrines and black redstarts breed within the cliffs, while stonechats and Dartford warblers breed among the gorsr within the valleys.
If you come by in spring or autumn you’ll see some migrating bird species like Pallas’s leaf warblers, red-rumped swallows and Sardinian warblers.
5. Cliff Railways
Hastings has two funicular railways rattling up and down its sandstone cliffs.
The older of the 2 is that the 150-metre West Hill Lift, which opened in 1891 and serves Hastings Castle and St Clements Caves.
This railway is unusual therein it runs through a tunnel and still uses its Victorian coaches.
The lower station is on the charming George Street departing from the old town.
The East Hill Lift will get you up to Hastings Country Park, and claims to be the UK’s steepest cable railway , with a gradient of 78%. This line opened in 1902 and is capped with a pair of towers built to deal with the water tanks for the initial hydraulic system .