In 1066 Old Hastings appears to have been at Wilting.

Hastings Burgh is missing link, says Austin

Martin White’s identification of the Old Hastings Burgh or fort at Upper Wilting provides an important missing link establishing the location of Hastings at Bulverhythe at the time of the Norman invasion, says Nick Austin, who has called on local MP Amber Rudd to help save the site from being bulldozed before a proper investigation can take place. Nick Terdre reports.

According to Martin White, the measurements of the earthworks at Wilting Farm tally with the dimensions given for the fort in a medieval document known as the Burghal Hidage which details fortifications built across southern England as a defence against Viking raiders in the late Anglo-Saxon period.

“For 20 years we’ve been arguing with the authorities about where the port of Hastings was, saying it was in the Combe Haven Valley,” Austin, the local historian who maintains that the Battle of Hastings was fought in Crowhurst Valley, tells HOT. “They argued against it, saying there was no sign of it there.”

The Burghal forts were all placed at points on the Roman road system, which passed through Wilting. The forts were placed to defend populated areas, so where the fort was, the town would have been, not to mention the port, as an inlet of the sea came as far north as Wilting in those days. After landing, the Normans are known to have camped by a fort – which would appear to be this one.

The new evidence also helps explain why there is an entry for Wilting but not for Hastings in the Domesday Book, which was completed in 1086, 20 years after the invasion. “No entry for Hastings was recorded by the Normans in the Domesday Book because they occupied the Burgh of Hastings which was inside Wilting Manor when they landed and camped,” says Austin.

He has written to MP Amber Rudd to ask her to intervene with the minister for culture, media and sport, Maria Miller, to stop the destruction of the fort site which stands on the route of the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road and is shortly due to be bulldozed.

Martin White, an amateur historian, wondered why he had been able with a little research to dig up evidence associating the Old Hastings Burgh with the earthworks at Wilting when professionals had come up with nothing. Austin agrees. “It is staggering that the archaeologists and historians who were supposed to have researched the route of the Hastings to Bexhill Link Road, which goes through Wilting, did not find this information,” he says.

“Indeed the whole public inquiry process, undergone twice at the behest of East Sussex County Council, is shown now to be absolutely unreliable and as a result the inspectors were misled. If we’d had this information at the public enquiries, there would be no road.”

Bulldozing history? Martin White’s findings.

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