Bexhill-on-Sea (often shortened to Bexhill) is a seaside town and civil parish in the Rother district of the East Sussex county of South East England. It is located along the Sussex Coast and between the towns of Hastings and Eastbourne. In 2021, it had a population of 43,754.
History
The first reference to Bexhill, or Bexelei as it was originally called, was in a charter granted by King Offa of Mercia in 772 AD. It is recorded that Offa had "defeated the men of Hastings" in 771 AD.
At this time, the term Hastings would have referred to this whole area rather than the town itself as it does today. In the charter, Offa established a church and religious community in Bexhill.
The name Bexhill derives from the Old English byxelēah meaning 'boxtree wood or clearing'.
During the Norman Conquest of 1066, it appears that Bexhill was largely destroyed. The Domesday survey of 1086 records that the manor was worth £20 before the conquest, was "waste" in 1066, and was worth £18 10s in 1086. King William I used the lands he had conquered to reward his knights and gave Bexhill manor to Robert, Count of Eu, with most of the Hastings area. Robert's grandson, John, Count of Eu, gave back the manor to the bishops of Chichester in 1148 and it is probable that the first manor house was built by the bishops at this time. The later manor house, the ruins of which can still be seen at the Manor Gardens in Bexhill Old Town, was built about 1250, probably on the instructions of St. Richard, Bishop of Chichester. St Richard's Catholic College, the local Catholic school, was duly for said Bishop.
The Manor House was the easternmost residence owned by the bishops and would have been used as a place to stay while travelling around or through the eastern part of their diocese. There were often disputes between the Bishops of Chichester and the Abbots of Battle Abbey, usually about land ownership in this area. In 1276 a large portion of Bexhill was made into a park for hunting and in 1447 Bishop Adam de Moleyns was given permission to fortify the Manor House.
In 1561, Queen Elizabeth I took possession of Bexhill Manor and three years later she gave it to Sir Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset. The Earls, later Dukes, of Dorset owned Bexhill until the mid-19th century. Their main residences were Buckhurst Place in Sussex and Knole House in Kent.
In 1804, soldiers of the King's German Legion were stationed in barracks at Bexhill. These troops were Hanoverians who had escaped when their country was overrun by Napoleon's French Army. As King George III was also the Elector of Hanover, he welcomed them, and they fought as part of the British Army. At about this time, defensive Martello towers were built along the south-east coast, some near Bexhill, in order to repel any French invasion.
In 1814 the soldiers of the King's German Legion left Bexhill, eventually playing an important part in the Battle of Waterloo the following year. The German troops had been here to protect Bexhill from the French. However, many of the local people were actively trading with the enemy by way of smuggling. The best known of the local smugglers were in the Little Common Gang and the most famous incident was the infamous Battle of Sidley Green in 1828.
In 1813, Elizabeth Sackville married George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr, and when the male line of the Dukes of Dorset died out in 1865 she and her husband inherited Bexhill.
It was Reginald Sackville, 7th Earl De La Warr who decided to transform the small rural village of Bexhill into an exclusive seaside resort. He contracted the builder, John Webb, to construct the first sea wall and to lay out De La Warr Parade. Webb, in part payment for his work, was given all the land extending from Sea Road to the Polegrove, south of the railway line.
Opened in 1890, the luxurious Sackville Hotel was built for the 7th Earl De La Warr and originally included a house for the use of his family. In 1891 George West, Viscount Cantelupe, his eldest surviving son, married Muriel Brassey, the daughter of Sir Thomas and the late Annie, Lady Brassey of Normanhurst Court near Bexhill. The Manor House was fully refurbished so that Lord and Lady Cantelupe could live in style as Lord and Lady of the Manor. Finally, when the 7th Earl De La Warr died in 1896, he transferred control of his Bexhill estate to Viscount Cantelupe.
Viscount Cantelupe became the 8th Earl De La Warr. At this time he organised the building on the sea front of the Kursaal, a pavilion for refined entertainment and relaxation. He also had a bicycle track made, with a cycle chalet, at the eastern end of De La Warr Parade. These amenities were provided to promote the new resort. Meanwhile, many independent schools were being attracted to the expanding town due to its health-giving reputation. The railway came through Bexhill in 1846, the first railway station being a small country halt situated roughly where Sainsbury's car park is today. This was some distance from the village on the hill. A new station, north of Devonshire Square, was opened in 1891 to serve the growing resort. In 1902 the current railway station was opened, and a Bexhill West Station was built for the newly built Crowhurst Branch Line.
1902 was the year that Bexhill became an Incorporated Borough. This was the first Royal Charter granted by Edward VII. Bexhill was the last town in Sussex to be incorporated, and it was the first time a Royal Charter was delivered by motorcar. To celebrate the town's newfound status and to promote the resort, the 8th Earl De La Warr organised the country's first-ever motorcar races along De La Warr Parade in May 1902. The town was scandalised at this time by the divorce of Earl De La Warr.
Muriel had brought the action on the grounds of adultery and abandonment. She was granted a divorce and given custody of their three children. Muriel, with her children, Myra, Avice and Herbrand, went back to live with Earl Brassey at Normanhurst Court. The 8th Earl De La Warr remarried but was again divorced for adultery. He also suffered recurrent and well-publicised financial difficulties.
At the start of the First World War in 1914, the Earl bought a Royal Naval commission. He died of fever at Messina in 1915.
Herbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey Sackville became the 9th Earl De La Warr. He is best known for championing the construction of the De La Warr Pavilion, which was built and opened in 1935. The 9th Earl also became Bexhill's first socialist mayor. He died in 1976.
The Second World War caused the evacuation of the schools and substantial bomb damage to the town. The Augusta Victoria College, a girls' finishing school for daughters of high-ranking Nazi officials and German nobility, closed permanently in 1939. Many schools returned to Bexhill after the war, but there was a steady decline in the number of independent schools in the town. The break-up of the British Empire and in particular the Independence of India in 1947 hastened the process. Most of the schools were boarding and catered largely for the children of the armed forces overseas and of the colonial administration. Although the number of schools decreased, many of the parents and former pupils had fond memories of the town and later retired to Bexhill.
Governance
Due to local governance 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.
Bexhill Town Hall is the seat of Rother District Council, for which elections are held every four years. In total, thirty-eight councillors are elected for Rother, eighteen coming from Bexhill's nine wards.
In 2017, local campaigners initiated a public consultation on the issue of regaining a town council for Bexhill. 9,227 people participated in the consultation, of whom 93.5% expressed a preference for a town council. The consultation was non-binding and, at a meeting in December 2017, Rother District Councillors voted against the formation of such a council by 18 to 13. The meeting was fully attended. Those who voted against the consultation's outcome mostly expressed concerns about the added burden to local taxpayers that a town council would bring. On 1 April 2021 a civil parish was formed.
At the local elections in May 2013, the Conservatives had a net loss of fifteen seats, leaving the Rother District Council composed of fourteen Conservatives, thirteen independents, seven Liberal Democrats, one Green, and three Labour councillors. The changes have meant that the issue of a town council for Bexhill has been reopened. The independents, supported by Labour and others, assented to a motion that would have a Bexhill Town Council up and running by 2021.
Above Rother, the next level of government is the East Sussex County Council, with responsibility for education, libraries, social services, highways, civil registration, trading standards, and transport. Elections to the County Council are also held every four years. For these elections, Bexhill is divided into four divisions: North, East, South and West.
The latest county council election was held on 4 May 2017. Following the result of a by-election in 2019, Bexhill has two independent and two Conservative county councillors.
The parliamentary constituency of Bexhill and Battle, created in 1983, includes the nearby town of Battle. Its Member of Parliament was Charles Wardle until the 2001 election, when he left the Conservatives and was replaced by Gregory Barker. He was the Member until the 2015 General Election, when he was replaced by Huw Merriman, re-elected in 2019. Merriman stood down for the 2024 general election, when he was replaced by the Conservative Kieran Mullan.
At the European level, Bexhill was part of the South-East England constituency, which had ten seats in the European Parliament. The 2019 election returned four Brexit Party MEPs, three Liberal Democrat, one Labour, one Conservative and one Green. They ceased to hold office when the country left the EU.
As with most other areas along the South Coast, in the 2016 referendum the Rother district voted heavily to leave the EU. Leave won in Rother by a margin of 58.5% to 41.5%.
Landmarks
The most notable landmark in Bexhill-on-Sea is the De La Warr Pavilion. The De La Warr Pavilion is a Grade I listed building, located on the seafront at Bexhill-on-Sea. The seafront building was the result of an architectural competition initiated by Herbrand Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr, after whom the building was named.
The 9th Earl, a committed socialist and Mayor of Bexhill, persuaded Bexhill council to develop the site as a public building. The competition was announced in the Architects' Journal in February 1934, with a programme that specified an entertainment hall to seat at least 1500 people; a 200-seat restaurant; a reading room; and a lounge. Initially, the budget for the project was limited to £50,000, although this was later raised to £80,000. Run by the Royal Institute of British Architects, this competition attracted over 230 entrants, many of them practising in the Modernist style.
Shapes tend towards streamlined, industrially-influenced designs. The architects selected for the project, Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff, were leading figures in the Modern Movement.
The aesthetics employed in the International Style proved especially suited to the building, tending towards streamlined, industrially-influenced designs, often with expansive metal-framed windows, and eschewing traditional brick and stonework in favour of concrete and steel construction. Among the building's most innovative features was its use of a welded steel frame construction, pioneered by structural engineer Felix Samuely. Construction of the De La Warr Pavilion began in January 1935.