THIS spit of shingle, thrown up under the lee of Beachy Head and to the eastward of Eastbourne, is formed, like Dungeness, to windward of what was anciently a large tidal estuary forming Pemsey or Pevensey Haven. At the Roman period the mound on which stand the ruins of the castle, was washed by the sea. The windward supply of shingle forming this ness came from the beach at Brighthelmstone, a fortified town below the cliff, in Elizabeth's reign, on the site of the chain pier, gradually undermined by the sea, and not wholly destroyed until the end of the last and commencement of the present century, and the growing out of Langley Point is coincident in time with the destruction of the Brighton beach as its subsequent retreat and decline are coeval with the rapid increase of Dungeness to the leeward. In effect, Langley Point in 1736 projected three-quarters of a mile further into the sea than at present, and it is a curious fact that the breakwater proposed by the Harbour of Refuge Commission of 1840, parallel to, and one mile from the shore in Eastbourne Bay, opposite the “Wish Tower” site and the Grand Redoubt touched at the north-east end of its eastern kant the low-water line of 1736, as shown by the surveys of Desmaretz, the well-known ordnance surveyor of that period, but situate in three to four fathoms of water in 1840. This is a striking illustration of the amount of speculation respecting any increased area of anchorage to be obtained and maintained by artificial works in the vicinity of these shingle moles or inclosing recessions therein. In Desmaretz's time the bays west and east of this formation, viz. Eastbourne and Pevensey bays, like those now at Dungeness, must have afforded considerable shelter with three fathoms of water, now, however, reduced to one, and the area of shelter correspondingly curtailed.
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May 17, 1884
Edward H Marshall 
Open Access