Brandard (John) after John Thorpe.

Hastings, Thomas Mann, 1850.
one of eight locally published scenes from ‘Mann’s Views of Hastings and St Leonard’s’, after the local artist, John Thorpe, who was born in nearby Fairlight in 1813. It shows the Stade, the Anglo-Saxon origin of this name for the beach landing area for the fishing fleet being the clearest indicator of just how long it had been in such use. But it was only in much more recent times, in 1834, that the installation of the first groynes along the beach allowed the level of shingle to rise sufficiently for permanent structures to be erected to store equipment, without becoming waterlogged or washed away. These are the famous net sheds, the black wooden huts designed to be tall and thin to maximise capacity on the minimum footprint because of the limited space available at the foot of the East Hill cliffs. The view looks west past Hastings to Galley Hill at Bexhill, and beyond to Beachy Head,.