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WINCHELSEA , two miles southwest of Rye and easily reached by train, bus, foot or bike, shares Rye's indignity of having become detached from the sea, but has a very different character. Rye gets all the visitors, whereas Winchelsea feels positively deserted, an impression augmented as you pass through the Strand Gate and see the ghostly ruined Church of St Thomas a Becket . The original settlement was washed away in the great storm of 1287, after which Edward I planned a new port with a chequerboard pattern of streets. Even at the height of Winchelsea's economic activity, however, not all the plots on the grid were used. The town also suffered from incursions by the French in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, at which time the church was pillaged; its remains constitute Sussex's finest example of the Decorated style. Head south for a mile and a half and you get to Winchelsea beach , a long expanse of pebbly sand. The fourteenth-century Strand House (tel 01797/226276, ; GBP40-50), at the foot of the cliff below Strand gate, is the best accommodation option.
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