3-082-883 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Caves at Hastings, 1895. St. Clement's Caves '...are well worth a visit. In summer they are lighted up every day and evening...The aesthetic visitor, however, will do well to select a day when the dim recesses are lighted only by the cluster of half-a-dozen candles which the guide takes in his hand. The endless succession of Rembrandtish effects as the guide meanders is delightful. Some slight suggestion of these may be gathered from our pictures, but the difficulties encountered by a photographer working by flash-lights in a totally dark cavern must be taken into account. No daylight filters into the caves proper save that which enters by a narrow slit...the lack of stalactites and stalagmites is amply compensated by the total absence of the damp, stuffy atmosphere which usually affects the underground explorer. The caves have at least once served the turn of the novelist. The scene of "Six Months Hence," by the author of "Behind the Veil" (new edition, Smith and Elder, 1875), is laid in Hastings. Its plot includes a murder, the body of the victim being concealed in an outlying chamber of "St. Clement's Caves".' From "Illustrated London News", 1895.