While racy Brighton tends to grab all the attention among England’s south coast resorts, Eastbourne has always been the quieter, more genteel neighbour: an old-fashioned place of ice cream parlours, strolls along the pier and deckchairs on the beach.
The 7th Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish, who owned much of the land along the coast, is to thank for the town’s Victorian grandeur. In the mid-19th century he commissioned the architect Henry Currey to plan a new town built “for gentlemen by gentlemen”, and Eastbourne swiftly developed, making a name for itself as a fashionable
