The campaign to save the Downs Liz Moloney

The recent campaign against Borough Council’s intention (now abandoned) to sell off the downland farms has inspired many to look back almost a hundred years to the great postwar movement to save the downs from further development of the type seen at Peacehaven. This reached its peak from 1926 to 1929: during this period most of the surviving downland from Eastbourne to , Seven Sisters, the Cuckmere Valley and Seaford Head was saved by the efforts of individuals and societies, with the National Trust to the fore in the Seven Sisters appeal. The downs, and the dramatic cliffs at Beachy Head, had been an obvious part of Eastbourne’s great appeal as a seaside resort from its earliest days. Victorian holiday- makers and residents could combine sea-bathing and town pleasures with the enjoyment of a wild landscape with traditional farms only a couple of miles away. The advent of motor-cars had only increased its popularity. But in the early 1920s, not far away at Peacehaven, Charles William Neville’s South Coast Land and Resort Company started building low-cost and poorly-controlled housing estates on what had been unspoilt coastal downland. Suddenly people realised that this could happen to Eastbourne, as the Duke of Devonshire’s estate was, like other great landlords, increasingly keen to sell off its freeholds, under pressure of death duties and other economic difficulties. Councillor

Oxen team, early 20th century. Downland farm, early 20th century.

JW Woolnough spoke to the local Chamber of Commerce in 1924 about the destruction of the unique character of the Downs, and pointed out that this was due to changes in ownership. Arthur Beckett, managing director of the Eastbourne Gazette and president of the Society of Sussex Downsmen, wrote to The Times on 24 May 1924, to say that ‘something stronger than mere protest’ was required to counter ‘the increasing vandalism’ in the Sussex Downs. Arthur Beckett was a key figure in the movement to halt the desecration of the Sussex Downs. The son of TR Beckett, who had made the Eastbourne Gazette a great Victorian local newspaper, he founded the Society of Sussex Downsmen, now the Society, in 1923 and the Sussex County Magazine in 1926. The society played a leading role in raising the money to save the Crowlink estate near the Seven Sisters, and in keeping the nation aware of developments in Eastbourne. In 1926, the Eastbourne Corporation Act empowered the council to purchase the downs west of Eastbourne as far as Beachy Head. ‘Councillor Woolnough, the origi- nator of the scheme, pointed out that the town would not be acquiring an unremu- nerative pleasure park, but an agricultural estate with a large rent roll’. (The Times, 14 January 1926.) The Mayor, Alice Hudson, wrote proudly to The Times in 1927 congratulating Seaford Council on acquiring the downs near Seaford and pointing out that Eastbourne was already engaged in purchasing its own downlands. When the purchase was complete in 1929, the Duke and Duchess of York visited to celebrate ‘the purchase by Eastbourne of Beachy Head and of many acres of down and farm land stretching away almost to Birling Gap, which are now saved for ever from building or other exploitation’. (The Times, 30 October 1929, see extract opposite.) Beckett’s Eastbourne Gazette devoted much of its issue of the same date to the visit. All this happened in the 1920s, when the country was still suffering the after-effects of the Great War and economic times were hard. The preservation of the downs ‘for ever’ was what everyone thought had been achieved. Let’s hope they were right. Taken from The Times, 30 October 1929.