Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me

 I recall I was driving back from an animal hospital when I first heard the piece of music, "Jesus' blood never failed me yet".  My dog was in the back of the car, and she was very ill.

The music was - I think - some way in when I first turned the car radio on.  I remember very clearly the efforts of an old man with a shaky voice repeating the word "blood" a lot and trying to keep above the orchestration - which was growing and growing as he appeared to repeat the lines again and again.  I was amazed - some 20 minutes later - to be still hearing the old man, repeating the word "Jesus", and coming back to the word "blood" as the swell of the music would start again.

Once the track finished, the presenter didn't say much about it - simply mentioning the name of the composer, Gavin Bryars, and saying he played the piece as part of the station's meditation series.

When I got home, I found the words and tune of the old man - and the orchestration around it - repeating itself in my head.  I resolved to find out more.

I knew nothing about Gavin Bryars.  I had never heard of him.  But I knew nothing about modern music more generally.  I discovered that he was what was called a minimalist composer, and that he had written a piece about the Titanic.

I found a recording of the piece.  It started with the voice of the old man singing what appeared to be a kind of hymn, which went

Jesus' blood never failed me yet. 

Never failed me yet.

Jesus' blood never failed me yet.

There's one thing I know.

For he loves me so....

And then back to the first line again - and again, and again.  On it went.  You could hear some voices in the background.  Some 4 minutes in, the strings came in, then built up, getting bigger and bigger.  It was an extraordinary piece of music.  I don't think I'd heard anything quite like it before.

I learnt about the unusual story behind the recording of the old man.  Back in 1971, Gavin Bryars was working with a documentary filmmaker called Alan Power, and they were making a film about people living rough near Waterloo Station and Elephant and Castle.  Alan Power passed Bryars some recordings of such people talking and singing which he was not going to use for the film.  Most of them - under the influence of drink - would sing bits of opera or old songs.  But Bryars concentrated on the recording of the old man - who was not drunk, and didn't drink apparently - singing what appeared to be a religious verse - just the five lines above sung once.

Bryars went home and studied the recording.  He found if he repeated the recording of the man's voice, the last line naturally flowed into the first, making a continuous loop.  So that became the basis of the composition.

He tells a story of making a recording of the repeating loop at the studio of the art college in Leicester where he was teaching at the time.  He went out to make a coffee, and returned to find his students unusually subdued, with some actually crying.  At that point, he realised the force of the music.

After composing and recording the piece around the man's verse, Bryars went back to find him to show him what he had done.  But by then the old man had died.

The final mystery in all of this is the verse itself.  It seems that no one has ever heard it sung or played elsewhere, or come across it at all.  It is probable that the old man simply improvised it, perhaps blending the words and tunes of other hymns or songs. The words do seem characteristic of a Salvation Army hymn - and that might make some sense given his predicament - but I can't find anything like that in their hymn book.

I find it hard to believe - as I listen to the music, and I have kept coming back to it year after year - that the man sang the five lines above only once.  The music around it seems continually to change the feeling in the words, even the meaning.  It is a rich piece of music, and I never bore of it - despite the apparent repetition.

But its original source - the old man himself, where he came from, what his name was, what misfortunes had driven him onto the streets, what drove him to sing about faith - that remains unknown. There is no trace to my knowledge of the documentary film.

So, sadly, all that remains of the man are the simple 5 lines.

Eastbourne - how to look at its social history?

This post is about how you might approach a social history of a place like Eastbourne.

To guide my thinking, I've been looking at a book by John K Walton, an academic who specialises in the history of tourism in the UK.  It's called "The English Seaside Resort: a Social History 1750-1914", published in 1983.  If I'm going to use it to structure my investigation, I'll need to accept Eastbourne's categorisation as a "seaside resort".  But I think that's fair enough, given the original vision driving the town's early expansion.

So, following the book's organization, the first task is to understand the "demand" - the people who first visited Eastbourne and then in due course decided to settle here.  We would need to understand their social background and economic status.  We would want to consider how this demand broadened out to other social classes as the town grew and the transport links improved - fuelled by the increase in disposable income and leisure time following the industrial revolution.  We would want to understand how the different types of visitor chose to spend their time in the town.  The wealthy well-connected took walks along the promenade, to see and be seen, and attended concerts and exclusive parties.  Middle class families perhaps focussed on the beach, and searched the rock pools and cliffs for marine life and fossils.  And then there were working class day or weekend excursionists, wanting perhaps less adventurous, more immediate entertainment.

The next consideration is the "supply" - the place itself, its raw ingredients, topography and layout.  We would want to understand what was there before the resort took shape.  We know about the two large estates, the tenant farms, the fishing and the limited military presence.  We would want to understand how the town's geography, the layout of the beach and cliffs, might have appealed to certain groups over others, with convalescents and young families wanting a more gentle terrain, with other visitors preferring something more challenging.  Finally, we would need to be clear about the town's proximity to a population centre from which visitors might come, and the quality of transport links to and from.  

We would then move on the social and economic activity in the town as it grew.  We've already considered the wealthy visitors and residents.  But we'd want to know more about the people who provided services for such people.  This could be domestic staff or people looking after, say, their laundry and cleaning.  It might also be professionals, say medics and lawyers.  Then there would be teachers and tutors, particularly as the private schools set up in the town.  There was no large scale manufacturing as such, but there would be craftsmen/artisans and builders -  although this work was cyclical.  So we would want to understand the problem of seasonal unemployment.  Finally, the social zoning of the town, and how it was consolidated or changed over time, would need investigation. 

We would then move to the original land ownership and the entrepreneurial activity behind the town's growth.  We would want to understand the economics of the projects initiated and the degree to which those driving them worked to an overall, coherent plan.  We would want to see whether they saw returns on their investments.  Infrastructure would be a priority, including sea defences, water, sewerage, gas, electricity, road and rail.  We would also look at investment in hotels, housing and entertainment facilities, including the Winter Garden, pier and baths.

Linked to this, we'd want to understand the town's local government, as the original landowners - the Duke of Devonshire, the Davies-Gilberts - transferred power to the democratically elected representatives of the newly incorporated borough.  We would want to cover local government's bit by bit assumption of responsibility for public health, education, utilities and - in relation to Eastbourne as a resort - facilities which were not profitable in themselves but made the town an attractive and enjoyable place to visit.

We would then go back to entertainment.  We've considered the larger scale investments in theatres and formal gardens.  We would look at the orchestras, both visiting and resident.  We would look at the golf courses and tennis courts built to appeal to middle-upper class visitors and residents.  But we would also be looking at the beach entertainers, the pierrots, the minstrels, the bands - the more popular entertainments offered as visitor numbers took off.

We would then want to bring all this together and see where it had taken us.  I suspect we'd note the tensions we had found throughout the investigation - the varying social classes both visiting and living in the town;  the effort to maintain the social tone of the place as tourism rapidly expanded; hereditary land ownership and the maturing urban democratic institutions taking over; the interests of residents set against those of visitors (including those earning their living from the latter).

Of course, we'd need a further source of guidance to take us from this picture of Eastbourne - at the start of the First World War, at the height of its wealth and popularity - to the town and the community we would recognise today.  More on that in due course.

Jane Austen in Eastbourne

This post is about "Sanditon", the novel that Jane Austen left unfinished at her death in 1817; and what it might tell us about Eastbourne in the years before the railway came (in 1849), and before the Duke of Devonshire started his great building spree.

Of course, the fictional town of the title is most likely not intended as a representation of Eastbourne.  Or rather, Jane Austen wanted readers not to think of it in that way.  She describes her town as a newly developed coastal resort somewhere between Eastbourne and Hastings.  But she also says some of its houses are built on downland, which would seem to make that location unlikely.  This lack of precision contrasts with the book's otherwise careful approach to the detail of Sussex's geography.

Some of the local landscape depicted certainly could describe the Eastbourne of Jane Austen's time - before all the houses came; before the town took the shape we recognise today.  There's the big estate, the farms, the scattered villages and the occasional new building.  We've seen this topography in some of the early landscape paintings of the town.

But what about the visitors?  The hotel?  The houses built for holiday accommodation?  

Well, we know that there were such visitors to Eastbourne. And we also know there were some basic facilities provided.  The Brighton historian, Sue Farrant, pointed this out in a paper we looked at a few weeks ago.  And the novel's opening sequence certainly encourages the Sanditon-Eastbourne association.  Its carriage accident takes place in a village Jane Austen names as Willingdon.

But we should not get too excited over this.  Once the travellers get moving again, the journey onwards to Sanditon seems to cover more than just a couple of miles.  Others have suggested that Worthing is Jane Austen's more likely inspiration - since it's documented she was well-acquainted with that town.

In the end, this can only be speculation.  Sanditon is most probably an imagined combination of several seaside settlements, drawing together characteristics Jane Austen had either witnessed or heard about.  All to serve of course her sadly unfulfilled fictional purpose.  

These characteristics include the nervous local landowners, seeking to increase their fortunes through property speculation; waiting for well-to-do visitors, whether from the West Indies, or from a London school, to take houses and apartments, and pay their rents.

They include the acute class consciousness of all those in the town, the need to be seen, and, more importantly, be seen with the right people, during the self-conscious walks they take along the seafront, towards the headland.

There's the in-fashion neurosis about health and dubious health remedies, including the milk of Lady Denham's milch asses.

And finally, the circulating library - an institution certainly present in Eastbourne at the time - with its books and periodicals for loan, and trinkets and curiosities for sale. 

So I'm going to conclude that you would have found all of this this and more in the Eastbourne of the first two decades of the nineteenth century, and leave it at that.  I'm pleased to have read Sanditon.  I'd been put off for years.  Some of it is written in fragments and notes, that's true.  Some of the characters are undeveloped caricatures.  But occasionally the writing takes off, and you know you're reading Jane Austen (whether or not she's writing about Eastbourne).

Muslims in Eastbourne

In recent posts, I've been concentrating on Eastbourne's origins as a Victorian holiday resort. But I don't want to lose touch with more contemporary developments.  One such is the increasing diversity of the people who live in the town.   This is reflected in the number of Muslims in the local population.  And the existence of a mosque where they can worship.  

I've found a pamphlet with a study of this mosque and the people who meet and pray at it.  It's called "The History of Eastbourne Mosque Community - East Sussex Muslims - 1995 to 2013".  Its author is Sevket Hylton Akyildiz, who is a post-doctorate research associate at SOAS.  The study covers census data on the Muslim population in the town and wider region.  It then presents information about the mosque itself and the people who attend it.

Unsurprisingly, Eastbourne did not attract large numbers of Muslims during previous waves of immigration.  Those new arrivals made for cities or industrial centres where the work was.  It is the case that Eastbourne's hotel and catering sector employed immigrants, particularly for work whose conditions did not suit local people.  But these workers tended to come from Mediterranean countries - such as Cyprus, Portugal and Spain.  

That said, from 1960 onwards, there were some Muslims living in the town.  Bangladeshis ran Indian restaurants, and brought over chefs and waiters from their country.  The children of wealthy Arabs, Africans and Iranians attended private schools.  And students from Gulf Arab states studied English at the town's language schools.  

The number of Muslims settling in the town increased in the 1990s.  Government policy was to disperse refugees and other immigrants more evenly across the country.  International events, for example the break-up of former Yugoslavia, as well as instability and conflict in other regions, increased the number of Muslims heading for the UK, and the range of countries from which they were either fleeing or relocating.  But even then, the numbers finishing up in Eastbourne remained low, and the increase over time was steady, not dramatic.  

It was about this time that a place for prayer was first established, above an Indian restaurant.  Prior to this, worshippers travelled to Brighton, where a mosque had been established in a converted nursery on Dyke Road some twenty years before.  Or they went to London.  

In 1995, some local Muslims purchased a building in Ashford Square, near the railway, which they converted into a Sunni mosque.  The property had previously been used as a social club by the South Eastern Electricity Board.   Those behind the original purchase (and actually the running of the Mosque till this day) comprised local Palestinians, Mauritians and Bangladeshis.  There were no wealthy overseas patrons or donors.  Nor any external ideological influence seeking to set a theological or political agenda.  All fundraising was local. And, interestingly, the biggest provider of funds was an Iranian woman (therefore Shia) who never used the mosque or involved herself in its management.  

As for those using the building, they come from all across the town and beyond, and are of varying heritage and socio-economic background.  Where once the Muslim community in the town was made up primarily of South Asians, there are now Algerians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Moroccans, Egyptians, Libyans and many others.  

After ten years of use, the mosque became too small to accommodate its growing numbers of users.  The management sought permission to knock  the original building down and construct a new one.  The local community's concerns about these plans - the noise from building, impact on parking - were predictable, and the application was rejected.  Those at the mosque then worked hard with wider community groups to address concerns and in due course a new application -  actually for a bigger building - was submitted and approved.  Building started in 2016, but the study ends before its completion.  I've not visited the new mosque myself, but the photographs I've seen suggest if nothing else a big improvement on the building it replaced.  

So where does this leave us?

The modest presence of Muslims in the town, and their mosque, tells us how far Eastbourne has come in recent times. But people from overseas have settled in the town to work for many years.  The Greek Cypriots are one example.  The Spanish another.  There is a bigger story to tell.  We'll return to this in future posts.

The Fortnight in September - R C Sherrif

In recent posts, I've been looking at some academic papers which analyse Eastbourne and other resorts along the Sussex coast.  I think I'm starting to get a better understanding now of the big national shifts that influenced the direction these towns took at various stages in their history.  

The first such shift is the emergence of the idea of a holiday by the sea.  The idea was made possible by wealth created during the industrial revolution.  People now had more disposable income, and the free time, to take such holidays.  It was this idea which brought Eastbourne into being in the first place. 

The second is the arrival of the railway.  People could now get to the coast quickly and easily.  This also affected the way towns like Eastbourne were organized, with their populations concentrated around the station.  Wealthier people could build new villas a little further out.  Some commuted to London. 

The third is the shift in the main selling point of these seaside holidays.  They were no longer primarily about health, although that remained part of it.  Visitors expected entertainment.  Hence in Eastbourne the pier was built, the bandstand, the parks and baths. But the permanent residents were keen to maintain the town's appearance - and its tone – and not fund things of no apparent benefit to themselves.  Tensions arose.   

Finally, the bus appeared, as an alternative, more flexible means of transport.  Now working people could live further from their place of employment.  In due course, the motor car came too, giving wealthy motorists even greater independence.  Towns became less concentrated around the station.  Housing estates spread over adjoining farmland and countryside.  

It happens that all these big shifts are reflected in some way in the pages of one of the books on my summer reading list - "The Fortnight in September", a novel by "Journey's End" dramatist R C Sherrif.  For those unfamiliar with it, the novel details the preparations of a South London family for their eagerly-anticipated annual trip to Bognor. It goes on to explore the degree to which the subsequent fortnight meets their various expectations of it.  Published in 1931, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more richly observed account of the holidays taken during that period. 

The shifts are reflected in the social standing of the Stevens family, where they live, what they do for a living.  They are reflected in the account of the holiday itself, where the family stay, what they do.  And finally, they are seen in the changes the family see around them, as Bognor expands, and the effects of buses and cars are seen. 

The father of the family, Mr Stevens, works as an invoice clerk in a warehouse in the city.  He commutes by train from his terraced house in Dulwich.  The family home backs on to the railway embankment.  In the garden, and in those around and on both sides of the track, survive gnarled old apple trees.  The housing estate, and the railway track which runs through it, are built on the site of what would once have been a country orchard.  Mr Stevens is one of the new lower-middle class, house-proud in a recently built suburb, with sufficient time and money to take his family on an annual holiday by the coast.   

For the fortnight itself, the family stay loyal to the ageing landlady of a fading guest house, on a street set back from the sea.  They eagerly anticipate the healthy colour they will achieve after a few days spent in the sun and the sea air.  But that's only part of it.  They are here for the bathing and joining the crowds on seaside walks along the prom. They watch the Pierrots and the minstrels.  They listen to the military band. 

Throughout the pages, however, we pick up that Bognor is changing, as is the countryside about.  The fields just outside the town, where Mr Stevens used to take his country walks, are now turning into building sites.  (But he can now take the bus further out, to the South Downs).  The low point of their holiday is the reluctant visit they make for tea in the newly built villa of an important customer of Mr Stevens' firm.  The family observe its sterile, bare garden, its opulent, joyless rooms.  And the disdain of the customer's wife for holiday makers in general and the activities they get up to.

None of this dry observation above explains the appeal of the book to the many who have read it.  It was a bestseller on publication.  It remains popular to this day.  It's something about the honest decency of the Stevens family I think.  The achievement of the writing is to make us really care whether the holiday works out for them.

Sewage on the Beaches

There's been a lot of concern over the past week or so about the state of our coastal waters.  Recent heavy rain, falling on ground hardened by weeks of drought, overwhelmed some sewage systems in the country.  Under an arrangement permitted by the regulator, water companies released untreated sewage straight into rivers and the sea.  This step prevents the unpleasant flooding that would otherwise occur in homes, hospitals, offices and along roads.  The Environment Agency issued warnings about water quality to sea bathers all along the south coast.

The centre of Eastbourne's sewage infrastructure is the fort-like works at Langney Point.  This is where Southern Water treats the sewage from the town and the settlements around.  It then pumps it out to sea through a long outflow pipe.   

Further west, by the Wish Tower, is the Granville Road Storm Overflow.  This discharges raw sewage directly on to the beach at times of heavy rain.   I think there's another one at Langney doing the same thing (probably more often).

I've been trying to educate myself on how this all works and how we've got to this point.  I've found a paper to help me put it all in context.  It's titled "Were Health Resorts Bad for your Health?  Coastal Pollution Control Policy in England 1945-76", and was published in the Environment and History Journal in February 1999.  The author is John Hassan, a historian at Manchester Metropolitan University who specialised in water. 

The article traces the beginning of the systematic practice of sewage discharge into seas and rivers back to the industrial revolution.  Coastal towns, as their resident and visitor populations grew, abandoned their old practice of depositing effluent in dug-out cesspools.  Instead, they built short drains through which they directed sewage straight into the sea.  The common view was that the sea's salt and mass would disperse and dilute the waste.  

All this sat uneasily with these towns' main selling point for visitors - their offer of an invigorating, healthy natural environment.  It soon became apparent that the sea was not as clean as it might be: unpleasant items were visible;  an occasional stench blew in with the tide.  

Local government, however, was reluctant to take action.  Resident ratepayers objected to costly schemes whose main beneficiaries were the visiting tourists; or neighbouring councils who themselves may have done nothing to address their own polluting.  

So authorities confined themselves to carefully positioned outfall pipes at or beyond the low tide water mark, from which their town's untreated sewage was debouched.  Here in Eastbourne, such an outflow was placed off the then remote Crumbles shingle bank (where it is today of course, although the surroundings are now built up). 

As time went on, concerns grew, and in particular fears of disease from bathing in these filthy waters.  Inshore fisheries became contaminated, with poisoned shellfish causing death or serious illness.  Outbreaks of Cholera and Typhoid occurred.   But official medical opinion remained sceptical.  A direct link between sea bathing and serious disease could not be established.  These illnesses equally affected those who had been nowhere near the sea.    

After the second World War, coastal pollution began to attract more attention.  Official surveys of our tidal waters indicated deterioration.  At the same time, seaside holidays were becoming ever more popular.  Rising living standards and the advent of holidays with pay reinforced the trend. Development of coastal resorts intensified, but investment in infrastructure to address increased pollution failed to take place.  Further concern was expressed about health risks, in particular the fear that sea bathing might be behind the Polio outbreak in children. 

The authorities for their part saw pollution controls as too costly.  The country could not afford higher environmental standards while there were more pressing demands on public funds.  The official position acknowledged that some beaches were aesthetically revolting.  But there was no evidence swimming off them caused serious harm to health.  Then occurrence of such illnesses as Cholera and Typhoid began to reduce.  This was actually down to wider, unconnected public health improvements, for example the Polio vaccine.  It masked the absence of any effort to clean up our bathing waters.   

The 1960s saw the emergence of the Coastal Anti-Pollution League, a pressure group founded by a husband and wife whose daughter had died of Polio after swimming in the sea.  In addition to its conventional campaign, it published an annual list of clean beaches - damning those omitted.  Whatever the league and its founders actually felt about the evidence for health risks, they focussed instead on aesthetic and amenity considerations.  Support grew.  A degree of pragmatism was involved - the campaign acknowledged that raw sewage pumped a mile or so out at sea might present less health risk than fully treated sewage debouched closer to the beach.  Official resistance began to soften.

This trend was mirrored in mainland Europe.  Fledgling European institutions placed environmental considerations at the top of their priorities.  The way was clear for the UK to implement the European Bathing Water Directive of 1976.  Campaigners and pressure groups now had a potent legal basis on which to take action against polluters.

This is where my paper's study ends.  There's no doubt more to consider as the water industry built new treatment works, and the EU published further directives.  The privatisation of water and sewerage was significant.   Brexit will provide a new chapter in the story, now or in due course.

For us and our investigation to understand better our town, the analysis gives us a couple of things to ponder:  

• the speed of development and population growth in coastal towns, and the struggle to build infrastructure to keep up with it; 

• the tension between resident taxpayers, and the interests of visitors and those whose livelihood depended on them.   

More on this in due course.

Settlement in Sussex 1840-1940

To recap, I've been looking at some old academic studies (across various disciplines) which use Eastbourne, or its surroundings, as their subject matter.  

Last time, I finished off a look at a study of the development of Sussex's coastal resorts from the middle of the nineteenth century to halfway through the last.  We learnt about the significance of industrialisation and its effect on people's spending power and leisure time.  We saw how pre-existing settlements along the Sussex coast grew to meet the market for Londoners seeking holidays or taking up residence.  

Now I'm going to have a look at a study exploring the impact of transport changes - specifically, the arrival of the railway, followed by the car and bus - on the size and organisation of Sussex towns.   

The article is titled "Settlement in Sussex - 1840-1940", and was written by W H Parker.  It was published in the journal of the Geographical Association in March 1950.  The paper itself was read out at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Brighton a couple of years earlier. 

The dates we need to keep in mind are 1840 or thereabouts, when the first railway is put down in the county, and then some fifty years later in 1890 when the network there is more or less complete.  The car appears first in 1895, with the bus ten years later.  But railway is dominant until the end of the first world war, and there is no general use of either cars or buses until the 1920s.  The final date to mark is the electrification of the railway in 1930, which speeds up journeys, particularly into London.

We'll look first at the situation just before the railway appears.  Then look at what happens when it does start to roll out.  Then we'll look at the impact of the car and bus.  Finally, we'll touch on faster trains enabled by electrification.  

So just before the railway, we find that newly wealthy families have already started to settle in Sussex.  Those with more leisure time than previously are seeking diversion through visits to the coast.  And former labourers - no longer working in the open air, but in factories or stuffy offices - feel the need periodically for holidays in the fresh air by the seaside.

As for Sussex towns, Brighton is busy and fashionable by this time, as is Hastings.  Towns like Bognor, Worthing, Seaford and Eastbourne have felt the effects of this growing visitor interest, but they remain small, stagnant and seasonable - probably as a result of their poor roads.  Sussex's ports no longer play the prominent role they once did.  Rye remains the biggest, with Shoreham, Littlehampton and Newhaven all carrying on some business.  Like the coastal towns, they have stopped growing.

In contrast, the inland parishes are getting bigger.  The ancient boroughs of Lewes and Chichester have solid populations.  Smaller market towns such as East Grinstead, Arundel, Petworth and Horsham remain busy as market towns for local farm and artisan produce.

So then the railways arrive.  

First the towns.  On the coast, they begin to grow.  Brighton spreads into Hove to its west, and Preston to its north.  Likewise, Hastings absorbs St.Leonards.  Eastbourne, Worthing, Bexhill and Bognor all get bigger.  The ports likewise become small towns. 

The increased population of these towns becomes more concentrated. Workers need to live within walking distance of their work.  They move in from the rural parishes around the towns.  Given much of the work is personal or domestic - working for other people living nearby - this compounds the concentrating effect.  Slums result.

The railway station becomes the heart of the population.  It becomes the source of most necessities of life as well as being a point of arrival and departure for journeys.  This means that people need to live near it.  And new settlements don't expand out from the station, but rather from the next station along the line.  The original town and the new settlement expanding from the next railway station eventually meet.  A bit like Eastbourne and Hampden Park. Or Brighton and Hove.

The railway has a further impact on the inhabitants of inland Sussex.  Rail-connected market towns now distribute imported produce, rather than goods sourced locally.  Unemployment and depopulation of the rural parishes follows.  The population is then replaced - to a certain degree, and only in certain railway connected places - by people moving to the countryside to take residence in villas.

Railway stations create new settlements, in addition to boosting existing ones.  They can't be built on hilly downland or forest ridge.  So new towns may appear around a station in a valley - perhaps down from the existing ridge settlement.  Heathfield is an example of this.  

And the company building the London to Brighton line deliberately places stations between villages, so it can serve more than one place - and settlements duly grow around them.  So Three Bridges comes about, between Crawley and Worth.  As does Haywards Heath between Cuckfield and Lindfield, Hassocks between Hurst and Keymer.  

 

But despite the growth of the towns, there is no new development in other locations along the coast - for the obvious reason that people can't easily get to them.  In fact, the population of non-urban coastal parishes falls.  Whole lengths of the Sussex coast remain in a natural state.

This is the position with the railway well-established.  Then the car arrives.  

An obvious point first.  Roads don't have stations.  Their impact is felt continuously along their course.  And they reach all settlements. Every town will have road access.  Also road is unaffected by the limitations of physical geography.  A road can climb a hill.

So immediately roads begin to reverse the previous concentrating effect of the railway.  Houses are now dispersed across land bought cheap as a result of the agricultural depression.  Buyers could set their houses among extensive grounds.  Towns are cleared of slums.

The empty spaces between towns along the coast are now developed, as the car makes them accessible.  The natural coast begins to disappear.  Ridge top sites become popular again, as do some of the villages whose rural labour occupants left for the town during the railway period.  

The final element in this story is the electrification of the railway.  It boosts places like Haywards Heath.  The town is still a railway station settlement, with residents commuting to Brighton and London.  But the car permits houses to sprawl across the countryside.  Other Sussex towns become London commuter dormitories.

Bringing this all together then, what have we learnt?

• Before the railway, we have some prosperous people beginning to visit or settle in coastal Sussex.  But most of the county is dominated by agriculture and market towns, hampered by poor roads.  There are a few ports.  

• The railway comes and the coastal towns expand as places of tourism and residence.  The population concentrates around railway stations and slums result.  Livelihoods of rural labour in inland Sussex are destroyed, with the countryside  vacated, replaced in some railway towns by commuting villa residents.  

• The car comes and disperses the town population, cheap agricultural land is developed for more spacious housing, and existing towns expand.

• The town of Eastbourne is benefiting from all these changes.

This sets us up well for our future investigations.