The Forgotten Village

I've had a very nice, relaxed day today which started with an early morning outdoor swim.  I stopped off at Elif's on my way home to collect Coco, who I'm looking after until the weekend as Elif, Seyran and Luca have flown to Turkey this afternoon to stay with Seyran's family for two weeks - it's the first time they'll have seen Luca.  Coco's going to stay with Galia for the rest of the time, but she's away on business herself until tomorrow.

At lunchtime I nipped into town to meet Tannie at Starbucks on her lunch break, and then this afternoon I picked up Chrissy and we went for a walk along the seafront at Seaford, parking at Tide Mills car park.

In the 1760's Tide Mill at Bishopstone was built by the Duke of Newcastle and from 1801 was run by William Catt. By the mid 1800's Tide Mills was a thriving village which had grown up to house the workers of the mill and comprised,  the mill office, the station master's house, worker's cottages, the main house, a large greenhouse and later there were stables.  There was also the Chailey Marine Hospital for children and nurses home together with a sea-plane base.  The mill was demolished in 1900, but the village continued to be occupied until 1934 when it was declared unfit for habitation and then it was largely demolished during the second world war due to the risk on invasion.

Anyway,  as we were walking through Tide Mills to the beach we spotted an archaeological dig taking place.  We stopped and asked what they were doing, and the guy to the left of this photo explained that he is from the Sussex Archaeological Society and said that they've been digging the remains of the village for the last 12 years to try to put together an accurate plan of the surviving remains, and to decipher the different stages of their construction using original plans and photographs.  He said they were currently working on the mill office and showed us the photographs of what it was like in it's time.  The other people there were volunteers, and one of the guys came over to us and offered us some banoffee cake that he'd made!. Rather random, but he said there was one piece left and it had to be eaten, to his dismay, neither of us wanted it lol!

It was really interesting talking to him, and he said that when they were digging the old cottages, someone was walking past who said that their grandmother used to live in one of the cottages, so he took her inside to show her how it would have been.  We could tell that he really enjoys his job, but he said that this was the last year of the dig, as they'd pulled the plug on it, which is a shame as there are still parts that haven't been excavated.  I've added a few other shots to my extras to give you more of a feel of the site, together with a photograph looking towards the Mill Office  which you can see on the left of the picture with the tall chimney.

We finally went on our way, and walked quite a way along the seafront before turning back and we stopped off at the Sailing Club for a drink.  I had to be back home by 6pm as my replacement hot tub was being delivered.  I think I'm going to keep it boxed up ready for next year as I've probably only got another month were I'm likely to use it, so for now I'll continue to top up the air in the faulty one, and then we'll dispose of it.