Tide Mills - Old Village

Old Village

The village consisted of a large tide mill and numerous workers' cottages, housing about 100 workers. The tide mill at Bishopstone was erected in 1761 by the Duke of Newcastle, and was later owned and operated by William Catt (1770–1853) and his family.

The Sussex Archaeological Society started a long-term project in April 2006 to record the entire East Beach site: Mills, Railway Station, Nurses Home, Hospital, RNAS Station and the later holiday homes and the Marconi Radio station (1904). Apart from the dig, it will evolve into a huge collection of film, video, recollections and photographs logging the decline of the area.

The mill stopped in around 1900, the village was condemned as unfit for habitation in 1936 with the last residents forcibly removed in 1939. The area was in part cleared to give fields of fire and also used for street fighting training. The site was not used for target practice by Newhaven Fort Artillery, though this story is common locally.

The area accommodated vast numbers of Canadian troops during the Second World War.

There are the remains of a station on the Newhaven to Seaford line at grid reference TQ460003. It started life as either Bishopstone Station (the Victorian OS map of 1879 shows it as this together with a short branch line to the mills) or Tide Mills Halt, but became Bishopstone Beach Halt in 1939 before its closure in 1942. This is different from today's Bishopstone railway station at grid reference TV469998.