Discover East Sussex and Explore the Dinosaurs of Hastings Museum and Art Gallery
- Wayne Munday
- 12 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Sip back and discover East Sussex and Explore the dinosaurs at the Hastings & St Leonards Museum. Founded in 1890 and is believed to be the oldest Museum Friends group in the UK. The dinosaur heritage of Hastings continues to inspire public interest and community projects. Hastings Museum & Art Gallery showcases many of the region’s fossils and offers exhibitions that highlight local geology and prehistoric life. Educational programs, such as Dinosaurs on Your Doorstep, further engage local families in celebrating this natural legacy.
The Hastings Museum & Art Gallery houses around 100,000 objects across various collections including Fine Art, Ceramics, Local and Natural History, Geology, Archives, and World Cultures. Key displays include ‘Before Hastings’, ‘The Story of Hastings in 66 Objects’, ‘Seaside’, ‘Dinosaurs’, ‘Wildlife’, ‘Subarctic’, ‘Native American’, and the ‘Ceramics Gallery’.
The museum also integrates fine art and social history throughout the building. It hosts regular temporary exhibitions and runs an expanding programme of educational events and community activities.
Hastings is a historic coastal town in south-east England best known for the 1066 Battle of Hastings. It gained popularity during Victorian times when the railway made it accessible to tourists. The town is surrounded by buff-coloured sandstone cliffs called the Hastings Sands with the remnants of a Norman Hastings Castle is perched on West Hill much of which has been lost to coastal erosion before modern sea defences were built.
Hastings lies within the Weald Basin formed by the tectonic uplift from the collision of the European and African tectonic plates around 30 million years ago. Erosion has stripped away upper layers of clay and chalk revealing the underlying sandstone and mudstone of the Lower Cretaceous period.
East Hill offers the best views of the Hastings Sands and especially at Rock-a-Nore. The beaches around Hastings stretch east and west mainly consisting of flint pebbles from the Cretaceous with some sand visible at low tide. These pebbles often contain marine fossils and hagstones the naturally holed stones once used in British folklore as protective charms. Fossils are most commonly found in fallen rocks along the foreshore though visitors should always be aware and watchful to avoid the unstable cliff base due to frequent rockfalls.
Hastings has yielded some of the most important fossil discoveries in the United Kingdom especially for plant remains, shells, fish, turtles, crocodiles and dinosaur bones and footprints. Among the most commonly found fossils are dinosaur footprints, preserved in sandstone layers as ichnites or trace fossils. These are a type of fossil that records the imprints or impressions left by organisms rather than preserving the organisms themselves. The term "ichnite" comes from the Greek word ichnion, meaning track, trace, or footstep. These ancient tracks provide vital evidence of dinosaur behaviour and movement.
Around 140 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period, Hastings had a much warmer climate and was dominated by dinosaurs, with early flowering plants and small mammals beginning to emerge. Seasonal floods and wildfires shaped the landscape, leaving behind sediments that eventually turned to rock. These rocks now preserve fossils that offer insights into prehistoric life.
For over 200 years dinosaur fossils have been found along the Hastings coast but the most significant discoveries occurred inland during the 19th century in local quarries. Rapid urban development created high demand for building materials exposing rich fossil beds in formations like the Wadhurst Clay and Ashdown Sands part of the Hastings Group dating back 143 million years to the Early Cretaceous epoch during the Berriasian and Valanginian Stages.
Fossils of Iguanodon species were collected from sites such as Little Ridge Quarry, Old Roar Quarry and Shornden Brickworks. Notable collectors included Samuel Beckles and Charles Dawson whose contributions are housed in the Natural History Museum. Other sites like Hollington and Buckshole have also yielded finds though poorly documented. New fossils continue to be found including potentially the smallest non-avian dinosaur ever found.
Image Above: Iguanodon bones from the Little-Ridge-Quarry - Image by Austen, Peter A. & Austen, Joyce & Hastings & District Geological Society Journal.
The Hastings Museum’s fossil collection began in 1891 with acquisitions from the collection of Samuel Husbands Beckles. Other key contributors include Edward John Baily, who collected dinosaur fossils from Black Horse Quarry and Philip James Rufford, whose significant fossil plant collection is split between the museum and the Natural History Museum in London.
Dinosaur fossils from Hastings include bones from large herbivorous dinosaurs like Iguanodon as well as carnivorous species. The museum holds Rufford’s notebooks and rare specimens some of which are counterparts to holotypes. Trace fossils like dinosaur footprints especially those found at Ecclesbourne Glen have helped in early dinosaur reconstructions such as the Bernissart Iguanodons. A model of the plant-eating Iguanodon, a species from the Early Cretaceous, is also featured at the museum.
Hastings Museum and Gallery as well as the seaside town is a captivating destination. Its fossil-rich cliffs and historic collections make it a key site for understanding Britain’s dinosaur history and the deep-time story of the land beneath our feet.
