Bexhill-on-Sea is a seaside town and civil parish in the Rother district of East Sussex, on the coast between Hastings and Eastbourne, with a population of 43,754 in 2021. It is a town, not a village, and the reason to go is one building: the De La Warr Pavilion, a Grade I listed Modernist block of 1935 that now works as a contemporary arts centre.
The straight-line distance from Eastbourne is 15.3 km; Wikipedia gives no road mileage between the two.
The seafront town was made rather than grown. The original settlement sits on a hill inland — the Old Town, chartered by King Offa of Mercia in 772, its name from the Old English byxelēah, meaning boxtree wood or clearing. Everything at sea level was laid out from scratch as a resort in the late nineteenth century by one family, which is why the parade and the pavilion carry the same name.
The pavilion came out of a competition announced in the Architects’ Journal in February 1934 and run by the Royal Institute of British Architects. Over 230 architects entered, many of them Modernists, against a brief for an entertainment hall seating at least 1,500, a restaurant, a reading room and a lounge. Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff won. Building began in January 1935 and it opened that 12 December, its welded steel frame pioneered by the structural engineer Felix Samuely.
It is sometimes called the first major Modernist public building in Britain, though Wikipedia notes it was preceded by some months by Hornsey Town Hall. The military took it over in the Second World War — Spike Milligan served there — and its foundations were damaged when German bombers destroyed the Metropole Hotel next door. Underfunding and unsympathetic alteration followed, until Grade I listing in 1986, a lottery and Arts Council grant in 2002, and a restoration that reopened it in 2005 with one of the largest galleries on the south coast of England.
It carries 4.4 from 4,384 Google reviews. One visitor in July 2026 put it simply: “I love the De La Warr Pavilion. It’s a masterpiece of a building. The Art exhibitions are always interesting, and often challenging.” Complaints run to the operation rather than the architecture: a visitor in August 2026 gave two stars, noting “Very good acustic for the concert we attended. The bar is not great”.
Bexhill Beach is 4.6 from 831 Google reviews, and reviewers describe shingle and pebble with sand appearing only when the water is well out. A visitor in August 2026 wrote, “Nice beach, both shale and pebble. Also sand if you time it right with the tide out… worth a search for the dinosaur footprints.”
The footprints are the local hunt, and they are not a sure thing. A visitor in June 2026 was honest about failing: “Came here to find dinosaur footprints but we didn’t mange to find them this time (early May 2026). Basically we didn’t come prepared, we could have used more windbreakers and waterproof boots.”
The geology behind it is genuine. The world’s oldest known spider web, encased in amber and 140 million years old, was found in the town in 2009, and in June 2011 a single vertebra reported as the world’s smallest dinosaur was recovered at Ashdown Brickworks nearby. Low water also uncovers the wreck of the VOC Amsterdam, an eighteenth-century cargo ship that ran aground between Bexhill and St Leonards. Arrive on a falling tide, or the beach is shingle and nothing else.
Bexhill Museum is the best-rated thing in the town, 4.7 from 542 Google reviews, and small. A July 2026 review begins, “Don’t be fooled by the small exterior. Such a mix of different items from dinosaurs to cars and train sets in-between.” One of its founders was Kate Marsden, the nurse who travelled through Siberia working with Yakut lepers.
Egerton Park, 4.5 from 1,949 Google reviews, is the green space in the middle of town, with a pond and a play area, with a warning worth taking seriously: a visitor in July 2026 wrote, “Fabulous spot for picnics and kids to have fun. Beware the larger play area is not enclosed with open water nearby.”
Uphill in the Old Town, Manor Gardens holds the ruins of the manor house built about 1250, probably on the instructions of St Richard, Bishop of Chichester, and the easternmost residence of the bishops as they travelled their diocese. The gardens are 4.6 from 168 Google reviews.
Elizabeth I took possession of Bexhill Manor in 1561 and passed it to Sir Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, whose line held it until it came by marriage to the Earls De La Warr. Reginald Sackville, 7th Earl, set out to turn the hilltop village into an exclusive resort, hiring the builder John Webb to raise the first sea wall and lay out De La Warr Parade, paying him partly in land. The Sackville Hotel opened in 1890, and the 8th Earl added the Kursaal, a seafront pavilion for refined entertainment.
In 1902 Bexhill was incorporated as a borough under the first Royal Charter granted by Edward VII, delivered by motorcar. To mark it, the 8th Earl staged the country’s first motor races along De La Warr Parade that May, and the signs at the town limits still read “Birthplace of British Motor Racing”.
Wikipedia describes Bexhill as now much more a settled community than a resort, with a large retired population and only a small entertainment area on the seafront; the last cinema was sold to the Wetherspoon pub chain on 1 December 2014.
By train, Bexhill sits on the coastal line between Ashford and Brighton and has three stations — Bexhill, Collington and Cooden Beach — with regular services to Ashford, Brighton and London Victoria. From Eastbourne, eastbound Southeastern services towards Ashford International run via Hastings on what Good Journey calls the scenic Marshlink Line, through Bexhill. The railway first reached the town on 27 June 1846.
By bus, Wikipedia records 13 routes serving Bexhill and lists Eastbourne among the places reached, but the pack names no route number for that run. By road, the A259 coast road between Folkestone and Brighton passes through the town, and a new link road approved in 2012 was completed in 2016. For cycling, East Sussex Pedal Power advertises hire in Eastbourne itself as well as in Bexhill.
The village and what is around it, at walking scale.
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Attractions, prices and availability in Eastbourne
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Background on Bexhill-on-Sea draws on its Wikipedia article, text there being available under CC BY-SA 4.0.