Central Methodist Church, Eastbourne

Central Methodist Church is the main Methodist place of worship in Eastbourne, a town and borough in the English county of East Sussex. The large town-centre building, with attached schoolrooms and ancillary buildings, is the successor to earlier Methodist places of worship in the area. Soldiers brought the denomination to the area in 1803, when an isolated collection of clifftop villages stood where the 19th-century resort town of Eastbourne developed. A society they formed in that year to encourage Methodism's growth and outreach survives. Local Methodist worshipper and historian Carlos Crisford designed the lavish church in 1907, and it has been used for worship ever since—even as several other Methodist churches in the town and surrounding villages have declined and closed. For several years until 2013, it also provides a home for a Baptist congregation displaced from their church, which was sold for redevelopment. The church is a Grade II Listed building.HistoryOrigins of Methodism in EastbourneUntil the early 19th century, the area now covered by the town of Eastbourne was mostly farmland punctuated by four small and entirely independent villages linked by a single track. Bourne (later known as Old Town) stood inland from the English Channel coast and was based around the 12th-century parish church of St Mary the Virgin; Southbourne was a linear settlement on the road from Bourne to the sea; Sea Houses, further along this route, developed from the 14th century as a fishing village; and Meads stood on much higher land to the west, where the sheer cliffs around Beachy Head rose from the coastline. The combined population of the four settlements in 1801 was 1,668, and all were served by St Mary the Virgin Church in the parish of Bourne. Prince Edward visited Sea Houses in 1780, but unlike nearby Brighton this royal patronage failed to encourage tourism and residential growth—most likely because all the surrounding land was owned by two rich families (the Davies-Gilberts and the Dukes of Devonshire), who sought to control development.