Jack Watkins discovers a port apart – the medieval town of Winchelsea, home to a once-thriving centre of trade, and scene of some bloody battles with the French…
Winchelsea has a hidden history. Snug in its hilltop setting above the flatlands of the Sussex/Kent border, it appears to be a mid-twentieth-century time warp. A place of genteel manners, tile hung cottages and tea shops.
But the hulking great chancel of St Thomas’s church in the middle of town, which when complete must have had the dimensions of a cathedral, and three rugged gatehouses on its periphery, point to a rather grander, bloodier past.
Old Winchelsea originally lay a little further east along the coast, in an area south of Rye now submerged by the sea. It was one of the Cinque Port, which in medieval times provided ships and men to defend the coastline on behalf of the king in return for certain rights. When the sea began broaching its defences in the 13th century, Edward I moved the town to the present site on Iham Hill and laid out an ordered, grid patterned settlement.
Today the River Brede looks docile enough as it flows past the north end, but in Edward’s day it was a major harbour. Winchelsea was the centre of the wine trade with France, and the launching point for many royal campaigns in Flanders and France. Gervase Alard, a leading citizen and merchant of Winchelsea whose impressive tomb is to be found inside the church, became an admiral in Edward I’s fleet.
But the Hundred Years War hit trade. Winchelsea was three times stormed by French armies, probably damaging the nave of St Thomas’s, they also sacked St Bartholomew’s Hospital and burnt it to the ground. Then the Brede began to silt up, eroding its status as a major port. No longer vital to national defence at the end of the war, and thus unable to count upon royal patronage, it fell into steady decline. The population gradually shrank back into a north east pocket of the town; what you see today is but a fragment of its former extent. Its massive walled defences are no more and it takes a considerable effort of imagination to picture the place at the height of its importance.
But clues remain. Recent excavations by a team involving the Trust, English Heritage and East Sussex County Council have brought insights into the nature of the old fortifications - bringing together disparate strands of historical and archaeological information.
Caroline Thackray, NT archaeologist explains ‘a lime rendering was used in the construction of the walls, so they would have been a dazzling white. Considering the size of the banks, as seen from the sea, topped by great white stone walls and you realise they were making a statement to all approaching from the sea. This was a place not to be interfered with’.
Another key find was the remains of a stone structure within the wall footings, which could well represent a feature shown on a map of 1597 – a postern tower overlooking the coast. Let the imagination soar as you wander along the great banks and ditches by the remote New Gate today, and dimly, as if through a medieval mist, an image of a great walled town may begin to emerge.
Discover Winchelsea's medieval heyday on foot.
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