London by the Sea

As mentioned last time, I'm currently looking at some old academic articles that use Eastbourne as their subject of study.  I first examined one about housing development and its impact on local people's appreciation of the natural environment.  Now I'm looking at a study entitled "London by the Sea: Resort Development on the South Coast of England 1880-1939".  

The article was published in the Journal of Contemporary History in January 1987.  The author is Sue Farrant, who lectured in history and tourism at Brighton Polytechnic.  (I've since discovered that Sue is still writing about local history - under the surname Berry - and has published several books about Brighton).

The article introduces some of the economic and social forces driving development of resorts along the Sussex coast.  It then goes on to assess these resorts' similarities and differences in the decades that followed.  It covers a fair amount of ground, so I'm going to look at what it says about Eastbourne first, then write another blog about its analysis of the other resorts and the bigger picture.

Eastbourne is one of a group of Victorian resorts built on sites where there'd been some small-scale resort-related building in the Georgian period.  Bexhill is another.  The original settlement took the form of clusters of facilities with one or two boarding houses nearby. 

The town's subsequent development into a larger resort relied on risk-taking by the main landowner, the Duke of Devonshire, whose estate was directly involved in building and the funding of new infrastructure.  From 1849, his agents sought to develop the town into a high class resort.  And the town went on to flourish during the national building boom of the late 1870s and early 80s, becoming the fastest growing resort in Sussex.

Initially, the estate far outspent the town's local government on resort facilities.  It supported among other things construction of the pier, Eastbourne College, the Devonshire Baths -  as well as gas, water, drainage, the sea defences, the parades, and the scenic road from the town to Beachy Head.  

In 1891, the new Duke (the 9th) decided to reduce this spending.  The investment's original purpose - to generate income for the estate - was not being achieved.  The council stepped in.  By 1914, it was taking greater responsibility for the provision of basic services, and was maintaining the promenades,  developing landscape parks and providing facilities such as golf courses, libraries and museums.  

The initial development by the Devonshire estate (and by the Gilbert family, the other big landowner) was socially "zoned".  The south western area was a high class residential suburb.  The centre was shopping.  The north east contained working class housing.  The estates' agents imposed strong building controls which reinforced these differences.  Councillors - made up of builders, professional men, tradesmen providing for high class clients (for example, booksellers), plus those who had moved to the resort to live - continued to strive to preserve the town's image as a high class resort.  

Initially, Eastbourne's dependency on the railway and lack of any other form of cheap transport confined the development of facilities to inner towns and central seafront areas.  But by the 1890s, the advent of the motor car began to change this.  From 1920 onwards, a building boom led to increased urbanization.   The depressed price of land, the availability of capital to invest in building and greater choice of travel facilities (for example car, bus or train) resulted in large scale private and council housing development on newly released farmland.

The town was not without its employment challenges .  Agricultural workers from the Weald had come to Eastbourne and other resorts and worked in building.  Their wives and daughters sought positions in domestic service.  But the local economy was vulnerable to seasonal and cyclical recessions, which depressed demand for these services.  There was unemployment when the tourist season was poor or when demand for housing from newcomers to the town temporarily declined.  There was little other employment - the construction of a major railway engineering works which would have broadened the town's economic base and created jobs was blocked.  In 1887, there was a parade in the town to ask for more action to relieve unemployment.  In 1911, the local newspaper highlighted over-crowding in houses on small estates not owned by the Devonshires or Gilberts.    

So bringing all this together, Eastbourne enjoyed great success as a resort from the middle of the nineteenth century, largely as a result of the Duke of Devonshire's patronage.  It sought to maintain its "superior" tone as it grew.  But like other resorts, it began to face challenges - changing clientele, suburban development, employment, and housing for the lower paid. 

I'll cover this bigger picture in a future blog.