During the war pupils were evacuated to St Edward's, Oxford, whilst the building itself was used for the essential wartime training of about 2,000 telegraphists who specialised in enemy code and cipher.

In 1978 a country estate, eight miles to the north of Eastbourne, was purchased, and St Bede's Senior School opened its doors in the village of Upper Dicker to just over 30 students.

In 1902, it moved from its site in Blackwater Road to larger premises in the Meads area of Eastbourne, at Dukes Drive.

The school is also famous for its John Bodkin Adams' connection, a doctor believed to have tricked patients into adding him into their will before poisoning them.

Home Office pathologist Francis Camps identified 163 cases where Adams' patients died in suspicious circumstances.

[3] Bede's Senior School is a secondary, co-educational boarding school with five boarding houses and five day houses, in the village of Upper Dicker, near Hailsham, with a total of 750 pupils and 223 staff, not including grounds or catering staff, working across the site giving a student to teacher ratio of just over three to one.

[citation needed] At the Senior School, new boarding houses have been built with common rooms and bedrooms that are arranged in ‘flats’ ranging from singles and doubles to ‘fours’ for the younger students.

Drama performances take place in the Miles Studio, which opened in 2006 and also houses the Legat School of Dance.

Inside the MPH, the indoor swimming pool is of championship size, along with a fitness centre and four squash courts.