About Eastbourne

Eastbourne ( (listen)) is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, 19 miles (31 km) east of Brighton and 54 miles (87 km) south of London. Eastbourne is immediately east of Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Great Britain and part of the larger Eastbourne Downland Estate. The seafront consists largely of Victorian hotels, a pier, theatre, contemporary art gallery and a Napoleonic era fort and military museum. Though Eastbourne is a relatively new town, there is evidence of human occupation in the area from the Stone Age. The town grew as a fashionable tourist resort largely thanks to prominent landowner, William Cavendish, later to become the Duke of Devonshire.