Bexhill-on-Sea

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Map sources for Bexhill-on-Sea at grid reference TQ7308

Bexhill-on-Sea (often simply Bexhill) is a town and seaside resort in the county of East Sussex, in the south of England within the Rother District Council area. The Anglo-Saxon name for the settlement was Bexelei from leah a glade, where box grows.

1 Early history
2 Bexhill as a seaside resort
3 Noted individuals associated with Bexhill
4 Cultural references
5 Miscellaneous
6 External links
7 References

[edit] Early history

The earliest known occupation of the site come from the discovery of primitive boats at Egerton Park. The town came into official existence with the Charter of 772. In this charter, King Offa II, King of Mercia, granted to Bishop Oswald land to build a church. Three hundred years later around 1066, William the Conqueror gave the Rape of Hastings, including the captured town of Bexhill to Robert, Count of Eu as the spoils of victory.

Bexhill manor in 2002

The church owned Bexhill Manor until Queen Elizabeth I acquired it in 1590 and granted it to Thomas Sackville, then Baron Buckhurst. Thomas became the first Earl of Dorset in 1603. In 1813, when the male line of the earldom had died out, Elizabeth Sackville married the fifth Earl De La Warr and she and her husband inherited Bexhill. This early history can still be seen in street names, with Sackville Road, Buckhurst Road, De La Warr Parade, and King Offa Way being some of the most significant roads in the town.

Smuggling was rife in the area in the early nineteenth century: in 1828 the local Little Common Gang were involved in what was known as the Battle of Sidley Green, a nearby hamlet.

[edit] Bexhill as a seaside resort

The Promenade, August 1999

The seventh Earl De La Warr decided to transform what was then a village on a hill around its church into an exclusive seaside resort, which he named Bexhill-on-Sea: he was instrumental in building a sea wall south of the village and the road above it was then named De La Warr Parade. Large houses were built inland from there, and the new town began. In 1890 the luxurious Sackville Hotel was built.

The railway built by the Brighton, Lewes and Hastings Railway (later part of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway arrived on 27 June 1846, although the present station was not built until 1891, when the town had become popular as a resort. A second line, this time built by the South Eastern Railway and approaching the town from the north was a branch line from Crowhurst: the line closed on 15 June 1964.

Bexhill was the location for the first motor race in the United Kingdom, in 1902. It was the site of the "first mixed bathing" in the UK--men and women could finally swim at the same beach.^{[citation needed]} It is also the location of The De La Warr Pavilion, the brainchild of the ninth Earl De La Warr and opened in 1935, the first example of modern architecture in a British public building. It closed for major restoration work in 2003 and reopened in October of 2005.

During the Second World War, Bexhill was named as a point to attack as part of Operation Sealion by Nazi Germany.

The town, like many other English seaside resorts, is now much more a settled community. Although there is a small entertainment area on the seafront, it now caters for more mature residents, having the highest retired population of any UK town.

[edit] Noted individuals associated with Bexhill

Comedian Eddie Izzard spent part of his childhood years in Bexhill-on-Sea
Dramatist David Hare comes from Bexhill
Desmond Llewelyn, the James Bond actor (as 'Q') who lived in the town until his death in 1999.
Spike Milligan was stationed in Bexhill while in the army during the Second World War, and most of the first volume of his war memoirs takes place there.
John Logie Baird, inventor of the television, resided in a house by the station toward the end of his life.
The up-and-coming indie-rock band Mumm-Ra come from Bexhill. The topic of their hometown frequently comes up in interviews.
Pianist Peter Katin has made Bexhill his home.

[edit] Cultural references

The second murder in Agatha Christie's The A.B.C. Murders takes place in Bexhill-on-Sea.
The town inspired the Goon Show episode The Dreaded Batter-Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-on-Sea.
The dystopian 2006 film Children of Men portrays a shattered Bexhill as a government-quarantined refugee camp for immigrants awaiting deportation.

[edit] Miscellaneous

On the 12 May 1729, a waterspout came ashore, became a tornado and travelled 12 miles inland to Battle and Linkhill. Nine farms and properties received serious damage.^[1]