Old Penny Arcade

Step into Winchelsea's Old Penny Arcade and you're walking straight into the Britain most of us only know from old photographs. This is a proper working museum of vintage coin-operated machines - the sort of thing that would have kept seaside day-trippers entertained for hours before smartphones existed.

The collection spans everything from fortune tellers and mechanical strength testers to player pianos and antique slot machines. Many of them actually work, which is the whole point. You feed in your old pennies (or modern equivalents) and watch the mechanisms whir to life. It's genuinely absorbing - there's something hypnotic about seeing how people entertained themselves a century ago with nothing but springs, levers and painted tin.

This isn't a flashy museum with interactive touch screens. It's intimate and a bit eccentric, the kind of place where the owner clearly cares deeply about preservation rather than visitor experience metrics. Family groups and kids find it oddly mesmerising - the mechanical logic is easy to grasp and endlessly satisfying. Nostalgia types and engineering enthusiasts will lose half an hour easily. First-timers might feel a bit lost without a guide, so arriving with curiosity and patience helps.

It's only a couple of miles from Winchelsea itself, making it a natural add-on if you're based at one of the nearby holiday parks - Rye Harbour is closest at 1.8 miles. The coastal walk back towards Camber Sands is excellent. Allow an hour, maybe ninety minutes if you're genuinely into mechanics. Bring coins.