Hastings gave its name to the most famous date in English history, though the Battle of Hastings was actually fought about eight miles inland at Senlac Hill, near what is now the town of Battle. The town itself sits roughly twenty-four miles east of Lewes and grew from an Anglo-Saxon settlement into one of the medieval Cinque Ports. King Athelstan even established a royal mint here in 928. That deep history is part of the appeal, and part of why the Old Town and the seafront draw so many visitors through the year.
It is still a genuine fishing port, with the largest beach-based fishing fleet in the country working off the shingle at the Stade, beneath the tall black net huts and the two funicular lifts that climb the East and West Hills. Like so many south coast towns, Hastings grew fastest in the Victorian era once the railway arrived: the population went from around three thousand in 1801 to nearly sixty thousand by 1891, as seaside holidays became fashionable and the terraces spread up the valleys behind the front.
There is a real events and creative economy here on top of the everyday trade. The May Day bank holiday brings the Jack-in-the-Green festival, revived since 1983, and the Maydayrun sees tens of thousands of motorcyclists ride the A21 down to the seafront. Old Town Week and its carnival fill August, and the Coastal Currents arts festival runs through September. The University of Brighton has a campus in the town centre with hundreds of students, alongside Sussex Coast College at Station Plaza, which keeps a steady young and creative population in the mix.
For its size, Hastings is not especially easy to reach by road, which shapes how local businesses trade. It is the most populous area in Britain with no direct dual-carriageway link to the motorway network, served by the A21 trunk road to London and the A259 along the coast. The railways do more of the heavy lifting: the Hastings Line runs to London via Battle and Tunbridge Wells, opened in 1852, while the East Coastway line links the town to Brighton via Bexhill, Eastbourne and Lewes, and the Marshlink line runs east to Ashford via Rye. Stations at Hastings, St Leonards Warrior Square, West St Leonards and Ore serve the different parts of town.
The port itself is worth understanding if you trade off the back of it. The fishing fleet still launches straight off the shingle at the Stade because Hastings never managed to build itself a harbour: the last attempt began in 1896 but ran out of money, and a fractured seawall is all that remains of it. Around the fleet sit the fishmongers, cafes and shops that depend on the visitors it draws. Higher education has grown too, with the University of Brighton doubling its town-centre campus in 2012. All of that adds up to a town with several distinct trading scenes layered on top of each other, and a website that speaks to the right one is far more use than a generic template.
Getting around the town says something about how it trades, too. As well as the mainline stations there are two Victorian funicular lifts, the East Hill and West Hill lifts, that carry people up from the Old Town, and the Hastings Miniature Railway has run along the beach from Rock-a-Nore since 1948. These are small things, but they are part of what pulls visitors in and keeps them moving between the seafront, the Old Town and the shops. A business that understands where its customers actually come from, and when, can shape its website around that, whether the aim is to catch a passing visitor in summer or a local looking for a reliable trade in the middle of winter.
For a local business, all of that specific detail matters. Naming the real places, the Old Town, the Stade, Ore, Silverhill, Hollington, the seafront, tells a customer you genuinely belong here, and it is exactly the kind of content Google favours over generic copy that could describe any town. We write your site so it sounds like it comes from Hastings, because it does, and set your Google Business Profile up so you show up when people nearby search for what you do rather than losing them to a chain or a distant agency.
Also covering: St Leonards-on-Sea, Ore, Bexhill, Battle, Rye, Bulverhythe and the surrounding villages.
