The Stade and Net Shops

The Stade is the traditional fishing beach at the heart of Hastings Old Town, and it remains an active working fishing beach today — one of the largest beach-launched fishing fleets in Europe still operates from here. The shingle beach is lined with the distinctive black-painted net shops, tall wooden storage huts that have become the defining visual image of Hastings.

The combination of working boats, net shops, seafood stalls, and Victorian seaside architecture creates an atmosphere that is hard to find on the English coast. Buy fresh fish directly from the fishermen on the beach or from the fish shacks along Rock-a-Nore Road. The Hastings Fishermen's Museum is also here, housed in a Victorian fishermen's church, and provides context for the fishing community's long history.

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A story
The net shops — the tall, tarred-black wooden huts used for drying fishing nets — were traditionally built narrow and tall because beach space was taxed by width rather than height. A fisherman could build a hut as tall as he liked and pay the same tax as his neighbour with a shorter one. The result is a skyline of black towers that looks like nowhere else in England.