Bexhill-on-Sea

Bexhill-on-Sea
The De La Warr Pavillion
Population
OS grid reference	TQ7308
District	Rother
Shire county	East Sussex
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	BEXHILL-ON-SEA
Postcode district	TN39-40
Dialling code	01424
Police	Sussex
Fire	East Sussex
Ambulance	South East Coast
UK Parliament	Bexhill and Battle

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. It has a population of approximately 40,000. The Anglo-Saxon name for the settlement was Bexelei from leah a glade, where box grows.

Early history

The earliest evidence of occupation of the site came 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 (also referred to as the 'Badman Town') to Robert, Count of Eu as the spoils of victory.

Bexhill manor in 2002

The Promenade, August 1999

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.

On the 20th 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.

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.

Bexhill as a seaside resort

Reginald Sackville, 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.

Bexhill was the location for the first motor race in the United Kingdom, in 1902 . This was celebrated by the Bexhill 100 Festival of Motoring, which successfully ran from 1990 to 2002 along the same seafront "track". The final Festival of Motoring took place in 2002, though the Bexhill 100 Motoring Club now hold an alternative classic car show in The Polegrove on the August Bank Holiday weekend.

Bexhill was the site of the "first mixed bathing" in the UK — men and women could finally swim at the same beach.

The De La Warr Pavilion, the brainchild of the ninth Earl De La Warr, opened in 1935, the first example of modern architecture in a British public building. It closed for major restoration work in December 2003 and reopened in October 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 has a large retired population, like much of the south coast.

Transportation

File:A259Bexhill.jpg

The A259 Bypass for Bexhill town centre

Bexhill is on the A259 road to Emsworth, the A27 road to Southampton and Portsmouth and Folkestone. nearby Hastings is linked to London by the A21 the town is served by coastal lines and has 3 railway stations including Cooden Beach, Collington and Bexhill. 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 via an intermediate station at Sidley to a terminus at Bexhill West: the line opened in 1 June 1902 and closed on 15 June 1964.

Governance

During local government reform in 1974 Bexhill became part of Rother District Council thereby losing its Town Council. In its place, Bexhill became a Charter Trustees town, represented by the Bexhill councillors of Rother District Council. A quarterly forum is held to provide a voice to the community at a local level. There have been recent plans to recreate a Bexhill Town Council.

Bexhill is the home of Rother District Council. District Council Elections are held every four years. Thirty eight Councillors in total are elected, eighteen of these from the nine wards that make up Bexhill. The May 2007 election returned 14 Conservative, 3 Liberal Democrat and 1 Independent.

The next level of government is the East Sussex County Council with responsibility for Education, Libraries, Social Services, Civil Registration, Trading Standards and Transport. Elections for the County Council are held every four years. For these elections Bexhill is divided into three wards, West, King Offa and East.

The 2005 East Sussex County Council election resulted in 29 Conservatives, 15 Liberal Democrats, 5 Labour and 1 Independent, of which Bexhill provided 1 Liberal Democrats and 2 Conservatives.

The Parliament Constituency for Bexhill includes the nearby town of Battle. The constituency was created in 1983, and was served by Charles Wardle until the 2001 election, when Charles Wardle left the Conservative party. He was replaced by Gregory Barker who remains the current serving MP.

At European level, Bexhill is represented by the South-East region, which holds ten seats in the European Parliament. The June 2004 election returned 4 Conservatives, 2 Liberal Democrats, 2 UK Independence, 1 Labour and 1 Green, none of whom live in East Sussex.

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') 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.
• Indie-rock band Mumm-Ra come from Bexhill. The topic of their hometown frequently comes up in interviews.
• Peter Katin, Concert pianist, recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist has made Bexhill his home.
• Nils Norman, Artist grew up in Bexhill
• Ollie Thompson Britain's Strongest Man 2006 winner, lives and works in Bexhill.
• Fanny Cradock and Johnnie Cradock lived in Cooden Drive, Bexhill.
• Hayley Okines - Progeria sufferer
• Michael Cowpland lived in Bexhill and went to Bexhill College until he was 18 then went to Imperial College and then to Ottawa Canada where he founded Mitel, Corel and ZIM high tech companies.

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.

External links

• Bexhill-on-Sea at Curlie
• Discover Bexhill - Non-profit guide to Bexhill's history and tourist information
• De La Warr Pavilion
• Bexhill Today local news
• Bexhill Museum