Listed buildings in Eastbourne

Eastbourne, whose estimated population in 2011 was 99,400,[1] grew from a collection of farming hamlets into a fashionable holiday destination in the mid-19th century; close attention was paid to urban planning and architecture, and the main landowners the Dukes of Devonshire placed restrictions on the types and locations of development.

As a result, much of the resort retains its "basic motif" of late Regency and early Victorian houses, hotels and similar buildings,[2] and also has an extensive stock of 19th-century churches.

A few older buildings—priories, manor houses and the ancient parish church—are also spread throughout the borough, whose boundaries take in the dramatic cliffs at Beachy Head and its two listed lighthouses.

The principal village was Bourne (later known as Old Town), location of St Mary the Virgin's parish church and a collection of houses and other buildings dating from the medieval era to the 18th century.

By 1780, when King George III's children stayed in Sea Houses, the area was developing into a modest but select resort at which the contemporary fashion for sea-bathing could be indulged.

[9] As well as St Mary the Virgin's Church, the Lamb Inn, Bourne's old manor house and several cottages, some former agricultural buildings and farmhouses—mostly now converted for other uses—survive from the pre-resort era.

Their joint decision to release land for carefully controlled development from 1850 onwards allowed Eastbourne to grow gradually into a "well-manned type of garden city, fully exploiting [its] marine setting and [its] varied and attractive landscape", thus avoiding the rapid, architecturally homogeneous growth seen in the nearby resort of Brighton or the unplanned, unfocused sprawl experienced further along the coast at Worthing.

[25] The church itself was opened two years earlier, although prominent ecclesiastical architect Frederick Walters' Decorated Gothic Revival design dated from the previous decade.

[8] Also omitted is a Grade II*-listed set of structures on Church Street in Willingdon, which used to be listed under neighbouring Wealden district but which English Heritage now shows as part of Eastbourne borough.