d-grown, bird-haunted waterway, we skirt the peninsula
on which the town is perched, and come finally to the foot of the road
which winds diagonally up to the Strand Gate. Thus is the town entered
by its most beautiful approach.

WINCHELSEA

Every spot in this delectable corner of England--Pevensey,
Hurstmonceux, Hastings itself, Bodiam, Rye--is redolent of the triumph
of change; but Winchelsea stands before us a perfect memorial to the
futility of man's efforts against Nature, a tangible reminder of the
irony of Time.

This ancient town, perched, like Rye, on a solitary hillock projecting
into the midst of a vast plain, is, despite its years and its ruins,
really a _new_ Winchelsea. The old town--the city proper--a prosperous
place of seven hundred householders and fifty odd inns, lies beneath
the ever-changing sea, some two miles (some say, five) south-east of
the present site. Serious trouble began in 1250 with a great tempest,
concerning which Holinshed writes: "On the first day of October (1250)
the moon, upon her change, appearing exceeding red and swelled, began
to show tokens of the great tempest of wind that followed, which was so
huge and mightie, both by land and sea, that the like had not been
lightlie knowne, and seldome, or rather never heard of by men then
alive. The sea forced contrarie to his natural course, flowed twice
without ebbing, yielding such a rooring that the same was heard (not
without great woonder) a farre distance from the shore.... At
Winchelsey, besides other hurt that was doone in bridges, milles,
breakes, and banks, there were 300 houses and some churches drowned
with the high rising of the watercourse." Not even then did the people
give in; but from 1250 to 1287 Neptune and other sovereign powers
descended mightily on the poor old town, and its tragedy was completed
when, during an utterly disastrous tempest, the whole district between
Pett and Hythe was inundated.

At this time Edward the First was Warden of the Cinque Ports, and the
planning of the new town seems to have been to him and his associates a
simple and congenial task. The present triangular plateau was chosen,
falling precipitously on three sides, with its narrow end towards
Hastings; and the new town was projected and begun on truly magnificent
lines. Edward seems to have been quite a pioneer in the modern science
of town-planning, for Winchelsea, like several other towns set out by
him, was given an