The Complete History of Eastbourne

Ancient Eastbourne: from the Stone Age to the Romans

People have lived around Eastbourne since the Stone Age, drawn by the shelter of the Downs and the fresh water of the Bourne — the stream that once ran from what is now Motcombe Gardens down to the sea, and which gave the town its name. By the Bronze Age there were small settlements scattered across the area, and the chalk downland above the town is still dotted with ancient burial mounds.

The Romans came too. The remains of a Roman villa have been found beneath the modern seafront, and one of Eastbourne’s most remarkable discoveries is the skeleton known as Beachy Head Woman — a young woman who lived in the area in Roman times and whose story has fascinated archaeologists ever since.

The Bourne: a medieval village by the stream

Through the Middle Ages, Eastbourne was a quiet place of sheep farming and fishing, clustered inland around the village of the Bourne — the area we now call the Old Town. A weekly market charter was granted in 1315, a sign of the village’s growing importance, and the fourteenth-century Church of St Mary’s still stands at its heart as one of the oldest buildings in town.

The grandest local building was the manor house, Bourne Place. In the mid-1500s it became home to the Burton family, who owned much of the land the modern town now sits on. It was later remodelled and renamed Compton Place — today one of only two Grade I listed buildings in Eastbourne, and still owned by the Dukes of Devonshire.

Georgian Eastbourne and the birth of the seaside

For most of its history Eastbourne wasn’t one town at all, but a string of separate hamlets — the Old Town inland, Sea Houses by the shore, plus Southbourne and Meads. What began to draw them together was a Georgian craze: the seaside. In 1752, the physician Richard Russell published a famous work praising the health benefits of sea air and sea bathing, sending fashionable society flocking to the south coast.

Eastbourne’s big moment came in 1780, when four of King George III’s children spent a summer holiday at Sea Houses. Royal approval gave the little resort instant cachet, and it later styled itself “the Empress of Watering Places”. A few decades on, with Napoleon threatening invasion, the shoreline took on a military look: the squat Redoubt fortress and a chain of Martello towers — including the Wish Tower — were built in the early 1800s to guard the coast.

Did you know? Eastbourne is named after the Bourne — the stream around which the original village grew. “East Bourne” distinguished it from other settlements along the same water.

The Duke of Devonshire and the making of a resort

Everything changed on 14 May 1849, when the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway finally reached Eastbourne, to scenes of great celebration. Suddenly the town was within easy reach of London, and its two great landowners — William Cavendish, soon to become the 7th Duke of Devonshire, and the Davies-Gilbert family — saw their chance.

In 1859 the Duke commissioned the architect Henry Currey to draw up a plan for what was, in effect, an entirely new town: a planned seaside resort built, in the famous phrase of the time, “for gentlemen by gentlemen”. Wide tree-lined avenues, grand hotels, landscaped gardens and a shop-free seafront were all part of a deliberate vision of elegance. The Duke poured a fortune into sea walls, drainage and a promenade, and the results were spectacular. Eastbourne’s population leapt from fewer than 4,000 in 1851 to nearly 35,000 by 1891 — a tenfold rise in just forty years.

The landmarks of the resort followed in quick succession: Eastbourne Pier opened in 1870, the Winter Garden in 1875, and the Devonshire Park Theatre in 1884. In 1883 the booming town was incorporated as a municipal borough, and a grand new town hall opened in 1886.

The Victorian heyday

By the late nineteenth century Eastbourne was one of the most fashionable resorts in England, a place to see and be seen — one of its early newspapers was actually called The Eastbourne Gazette and Fashionable Visitors List. The Grand Hotel, the “White Palace” of the seafront, opened to cater to wealthy visitors, while Devonshire Park became a hub of tennis, concerts and high society.

The town guarded its exclusivity fiercely. In the 1890s the council twice tried to persuade the railway companies not to sell cheap day tickets from London, hoping to keep the “wrong sort” of visitor away — attempts that were as unsuccessful as they were snobbish. The Duke of Devonshire’s refusal to allow shops along the seafront dates from this era, and it is why, uniquely among British resorts, Eastbourne’s promenade remains lined with hotels rather than amusements to this day.

Eastbourne and the World Wars

The twentieth century brought harder times. During the First World War, many of the town’s grand hotels were requisitioned as military hospitals for wounded soldiers. The Second World War hit even harder. Children were first evacuated to Eastbourne, thought to be safe from the bombs — only to be evacuated away again as the town’s exposed position on the Channel coast made it a frequent target. Eastbourne became one of the most heavily raided towns in the south-east of England, and the scars of those raids reshaped parts of the town for decades.

Modern Eastbourne

After the war, Eastbourne rebuilt and reinvented itself, modernising its attractions while holding on to its Victorian character. The town expanded outwards into suburbs like Hampden Park and Langney, and in the 1990s a whole new waterside district appeared to the east: the Sovereign Harbour marina, built around four linked harbours where there had once been open shore.

Culture has been at the heart of the town’s more recent story. In 2009 the Towner gallery reopened in a bold new building beside Devonshire Park, and in 2023 it hosted the Turner Prize — the first time Britain’s most famous art award had ever come to Sussex. Today Eastbourne is home to more than 100,000 people and remains what the Victorians made it: a sunny, elegant seaside town between the Downs and the sea. For everything there is to see and do here now, take a look at our guide to the best things to do in Eastbourne.

Eastbourne history: FAQs