to their homes at an early hour.
Pevensey Castle may be regarded as one of the lions of Hastings; as more or less all the year round, but particularly during the summer months, excursion and pic-nic parties thither go for a day’s enjoyment, and few are the visitors to Hastings who take their departure without seeing Pevensey. Had the weather on the occasion of the Archaeological Society’s visit been of a less wretched character the number of persons from Hastings and St. Leonards would have been very much greater; not only because such meetings are usually of an agreeable and social nature as affording a pleasant jaunt and a source of information, but also because Pevensey in particular being a limb or member of the premier Cinque Port, it would have for the people of Hastings a special associative interest. This speciality would include the now established fact that its site (or thereabout) was that of the ancient Anderida; that it was the landing-place of William the Conqueror; that it supplied a few of the Hastings contingent of “shippes” that helped to defeat the Spanish Armada; that it contributed a portion of the money that formed a free gift to Richard Lyffe, the Hastings Bailiff, who represented Hastings so many years in Parliament and so many times at the Yarmouth Herring-fair; and that the inhabitants of Pevensey Sluice have still the privilege of voting for a Hastings Member of Parliament. Our local Guide-books usually contain a view of Pevensey Castle as it now appears; but the compiler of this history, thinking that some older views would be equally interesting to antiquarians, has here found a place for them.
