A small flotilla of gaily coloured fishing boats line the shingle beach at Hastings, East Sussex. Behind them are the bulldozers that shunt them into the waves and beyond, in neat rows, are black wooden fishermen’s huts and fish stalls, where on a good day teenage daughters, wives and retired skippers sell some of the day’s catch.
This is the Stade, a Saxon word for “landing place” from where wooden boats have set off since before William the Conqueror arrived in 1066.
