Sussex Towns Guide
Tourist Guide for Hastings East Sussex
Smugglers - Monks WalkThe caves have been an attraction since victorian times.
On the 22nd of February 1864 there was a royal visit by the Prince and Princess of Wales.
There was another royal visit in 1873 when Prince Albert and Prince George Federick, the two sons of the Prince of Wales toured the caves.
The earliest written reference to the caves appears in The Gentleman Magazine in 1786 when Matt Skinner a visitor to the town, describes a cave where "An old man and his wife have made their habitation from the year 1783 having been discharged from the town for repeated misbehaviour"
They lived at the bottom of Monks Walk!