Eastbourne's development as ‘the Empress of Watering Places' was slower than its neighbours but was all the better for that. The first Royal visit to the town was by the children of George III who stayed at Sea Houses in 1780, though it was still some 70 years before the Earl of Burlington was to consider developing the town as a seaside resort.

The Round House

Tradition has it that the Earl of Burlington was approached by the famous 19th century architect Decimus Burton in 1833, with a design for a new coastal town to be flatteringly known as Burlington. Unfortunately, no documentary evidence supports this early beginning but three years later Burton produced a building plan for 60 acres of roads, sewers and sea walls.

In 1840 he produced yet another scheme, after he had designed and built Trinity Chapel between 1837 and 1839 as a chapel of ease to the parish church. Nothing was to become of Burton's plans for Eastbourne. The second Earl became diffident and got cold feet and Burton left Eastbourne to concentrate on his new development at nearby St. Leonards.

The Great House

A few years passed and the Sussex surveyor James Berry was called in by Burlington to set out and survey the first portion of what was to be a new Eastbourne. Burlington had been alarmed at the rate the sea was encroaching, and in 1848 work at Splash Point near the pier began; a stepped sea wall was constructed of local greensand, and the beginning of our seafront had been made.