"What is that amongst the trees? Why we are passing through a fine old ruin of a gateway! – up a gentle ascent between an avenue of trees, on the right a mansion with park-like grounds; fields sprinkled over with cottages and ivy-grown gables; and a forward vista of something more like a village, but still most delightfully spacious, - we have been travelling for a quarter of a mile through the “cinque port” of Winchelsea without knowing it! I like this: I shall not soon forget…thy sturdy tower-flanked Strand-gate"

This view by Francis Frith (1822-1898) of the ivy-clad Strand Gate at Winchelsea in East Sussex is one of sixteen photographs of views in Hastings, St Leonards, Rye and Winchelsea illustrating his book ‘The Gossiping Photographer at Hastings’, published in 1864