A beautiful Sussex village became a ghost town that remains abandoned to this day when Britain was bracing for an invasion by Nazi Germany.
Tide Mills in East Sussex was founded back 1761 when corn merchants obtained permission to construct the area’s iconic dam and a mill.
In the more than 150 years that followed, Tide mills became a thriving economic hub with a growing community of mill workers and their families, and even had its own train station.
But over the years the area lost its luster and by 1930, the future of the village’s days appeared to be numbered as Parliament passed a Housing Act allowing local authorities to condemn housing as unfit to be lived in, as per Sussex Live.
Midway through the decade, part of the village was declared a clearance area with local officials apparently concerned about the alleged sanitary defects of several dwellings.
Six houses shared a single standpipe for their water, with general waste from the houses removed and dumped into the sea.
By 1940 the last residents had left, as the site was converted into a line of defense as Britain prepared for the possibility of an invasion by Adolf Hitler’s forces during World War 2.
The remaining buildings were used by troops the village for training during which they were damaged beyond repair.
Others to the south of the mill creek were demolished to provide a clear field of fire.
The buildings that remained after the war was over were were then demolished in 1946/7, leaving only some walls standing, as per the Tide Mills Project.
But though nothing of the village’s bustling community remains, you can still visit the eerie foundations that remain, as well as the last standing walls of the school, hospital, and beach-side homes.
Visitors can then continue on through the reserve and either the seaside towns of Seaford or Newhaven.
Its shingle beach also remains to this day, but given the total lack of development around it, there’s not much in the way of entertainments.
