shewn on the Corporation Map of 1746, and said to have been navigable up to Hole Farm. ]
The following is an extract from the Report issued from the Office of Woods and Forests :
" Office of Woods and Forests, "
April 14th, 1829.
" My Lords,--We beg to transmit to Your Lordships herewith Copy of a Letter we lately received from Mr. Green, our Solicitor, inclosing two bills, which were some time since transmitted to him by Mr. Miller, of Bedford Row, Solicitor ; one amounting to £43 18s., in respect of business done in the investigation of a Claim which he had been advised to institute on behalf of the Crown to certain lands at Rye, and the other for £27 8s., for his professional assistance in establishing the title of the Crown to a considerable tract of Derelict Land near Hastings, which has within these few years been taken possession of by a number of persons who have erected a great many Houses and other Buildings thereon, without any authority from Your Lordships, or from this Department, for so doing, or paying any rent to the Crown for the ground in acknowledgment of the Crown's title thereto.
" The last-mentioned lands adjoin to the town of Hastings, under the Western Cliff, and occupy a space of nearly a quarter of a Mile in length and 500 yards in width, which from its situation and appearance was, without doubt, formerly part of the seashore, upon which the sea in its ordinary tides used to flow and re-flow, the Cliff, immediately under which it is situated bearing evident marks of having formed the ancient barrier against the sea, and of having been in former times overflowed by the daily and ordinary tides, but that by the accumulation of the shingles, the sea has gradually receded, leaving the ground in question waste, and for very many years totally un-productive.
" The great increase, however, which has taken place in the population of the town of Hastings within these twenty years having created a great demand for Building Ground in the neighbourhood of the town, the land was gradually encroached upon by the erection of Buildings thereon, some under leases, or with the permission of Lord Chichester, who claimed the whole of the ground as owner or lord under a grant thereof in the reign of James the First, and others, with the sanction of the Corporation of Hastings, who claimed that part of the land which lies within the liberty of the town, under a Grant made to the Corporation in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and small rents or acknowledgments were paid to his Lordship, and to the Corporation, by several of the parties by whom the Buildings were erected.
" Having some years since, received information that by neither of these Grants was the ground in question conveyed either to Lord Chichester, or to the Corporation of Hastings, but that the whole would be found to belong to the Crown, we laid a case in the -
