What’s going for it? Winchelsea is yin to Rye’s yang. Both hill towns rise above the smudgy sludge of the marshes and wetlands on the Sussex/Kent border, facing each other two miles apart across the river Brede. But where Rye is labyrinthine, alleys and streets curled around its mound, Winchelsea was laid out on a grid in the 13th century, after the old town down on the beach was inundated one last time. And where Rye today is inundated with its own tide of tourists after a dose of tea, cake and cutesiness, Winchelsea is quiet as a church mouse, and odd with it. The town never quite recovered from the sea no longer inundating, and instead retreating from the town like a final capricious act of revenge on the part of nature. Winchelsea’s silence and its town plan make for an attractively strange atmosphere, like the setting for a 1970s dystopian children’s sci-fi series. The Tomorrow People. Children Of The Stones. Where is everyone? Getting sloshed, I reckon, down in the medieval wine cellars, built under the streets. (Every town should have built-in wine cellars; town planners, take note.)
The case against Don’t come for bright lights and bustle. There’s a deli, cafes, a pub or two and a post office, but not much else.
Well connected? Trains: every couple of hours to London St Pancras (70-80 minutes, with a change at Ashford), Hastings (14-19 minutes), Ashford (30 minutes) and Rye (three to four minutes). Driving: slow roads hereabouts: half an hour to Ashford and the M20, 50 minutes to Folkestone and the Channel tunnel.
Schools Primaries: St Thomas’s CofE, nearby Rye Community and Icklesham CofE are all “good”, says Ofsted. Secondaries: Rye College is “good”.
Hang out at… The New Inn for a pint, Winchelsea Farm Kitchen for deli fare.
Where to buy The grid is laid out with beautiful listed medieval, Tudor and 18th-century homes, great property from cottages to barns to tasty Edwardians. Winchelsea Beach is an appealingly lonely, shacky beach suburb running east to Camber Sands and west towards Hastings under the cliffs below Pett, where house prices and grandeur rise somewhat. Large detacheds and town houses, £400,000-£1m. Few semis, but roughly £350,000. Not much of a rental market.
Bargain of the week Three-bed, weatherboarded and listed early 19th-century townhouse in the centre, £275,000 with Phillips & Stubbs via rightmove.co.uk.
From the streets
Tim Bowen “For an impression of how Winchelsea looked when it was an island, walk to the old windmill. The view across the valley is dramatic.”
Stephen Leach “The Ship on Winchelsea Beach has good beer, food and a wonderful butchery.”
Robin Whitehead “St Thomas’s church has fantastic stained glass and Spike Milligan’s grave.”
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