ABSTRACT
Settlement at Hasting was first noted in the Anglo-Saxon era, with its name deriving from an incoming Germanic tribe called the Haestingas.1 Wedged between the Jutes of Kent to the east and the South Saxons to the west, Hastings emerged as one of the ports of the county of Sussex. In the twelfth century Hastings achieved important defence and trading rights as one of the confederacy of Cinque Ports. The duty of these ports was to provide the crown with ships for defence and to transport troops, making them ‘the backbone of the royal fleet’ in the Middle Ages. Maintaining such ships was a significant burden, but in recompense the Cinque Ports had substantial privileges as free corporations, being for example immune from a multitude of fiscal obligations including feudal and shire taxes.2 As one of the confederacy, in 1265 Hastings sent four men to Simon de Montford’s parliament instead of the two from other towns.3 By belonging to the ‘Five Ports’, medieval Hastings had an enhanced political status, but a storm of 1287 started a slow decline of the town as an important port, while the privileges of the confederacy fell away from the sixteenth century.4 Fishing became the mainstay of the local economy, though by the early nineteenth century silk-weaving, shipbuilding and most profitable of all, smuggling, was also carried out. Apart from some small-scale boat-building these occupations were all but extinct by the inter-war period.5 The only remaining market by the 1920s was the fish market, situated at the west end of the Stade.
