"I have seen a map of Sussex in Chichester Cathedral, of ancient date, on which was depicted a tower. I obtained the permission of the Countess Waldegrave and her tenant, Mr. Waters, to make excavations on the East Hill. The building appears to have stood east and west, if I may judge by a wall opened up by me for about one hundred feet, which terminated at the western end in an angular bend towards the cliff. I cut trenches across the Hill within the wall, and came upon a cist or coffin of Caen stone.
Also several bodies, very perfect, on layers of charcoal, and some iron rivets and large headed nails. I am sorry to say I was disappointed not having found anything to throw light upon the probable date of the wall, etc.,'" Suss. Arch. Coll., vol. IX., p. 366. It is to be. noted that Ross makes no mention of a church. Dawson, in his History of Hastings Castle, briefly refers to Ross's remarks, and ventures the opinion "that from the discovery of human skeletons, there might have been a 13th century cemetery there."
Horsfield's Sussex, vol. I., p. 452, states : "There is an old burying ground still partly enclosed (1834), but used only as a grazing ground, on the top of the East Hill in All Saints' Parish. It is called St. George's for which I have had nc satisfactory reason or authority given, and am further at a loss to assign a name to it. as the small decay benefices already recited were all on the western side of the town.
From old deeds of 1713 I have had the opportunity of perusing, it is clear the East Hill was known and commonly mentioned in some of these deeds of the 17th and 18th centuries as St. George's Hill. Although Horsfield confesses ignorance as to the origin of the old burial ground discovered there, the best account is given by T. H. Cole, Antiquities of Hastings, 1884, p. 143 : "The enclosure (on East Hill) is far too small to be a (Roman) Camp ; it is, in fact, the churchyard of the ancient and forgotten Church once dedicated to St. George, the whole Hill having been known as St. George's, and the right of way to the Hill being due to its having been on the high road to the Church, and should be religiously preserved. As late as 1579, we read that Thomas Lam had one messuage called St. George's, and lands and tenements, amounting to 60 acres, called St. George's Hill, in the port of Hastings, worth £20 a year. Mr. Rainolds, the Town Clerk, paid nine shillings a year for St. George's Hill, in 1656. The enclosure now used as a garden is attached to the living of All Saints, and on its southern side a few stones in a portion of the wall still commemorate the precise site of the Church ; near the extreme western point of the East Hill once stood an ancient round tower or Pharos. When that fell into decay the Tower of St. George's would form an admirable sea mark for mariners making for Hastings Harbour. The Church seems to have been destroyed with the rest of the town by the French in 1378, and never rebuilt." One of the librarians of the British Museum has expressed his opinion that Cole's account is the best he could find. Letter from British Museum, April 18th, 1901.
