In nearby Leeds Avenue an original Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) guardhouse is the sole surviving building from this enterprise and is now converted to a bungalow.
The Eastbourne Aviation Company was an aircraft factory that was constructed in early 1913 on the Crumbles shingle beach where the Sovereign Centre swimming pool now stands.
[2] With the outbreak of war, the site was taken over by the Royal Naval Air Service and subsequently expanded by acquiring neighbouring land.
A young trainee Dan Minchin learned to fly a Bristol Boxkite at this aerodrome and in 1927 attempted to cross the Atlantic in a Fokker V11A monoplane named St Raphael.
[2] Trainee numbers at the site decreased in the latter months of the war, and 50 TDS was moved to RAF Manston by autumn 1919.