About Meads Village
Meads Village lies between Eastbourne town centre and Beachy Head. It is prized for its wide, tree-lined streets and grand Victorian and Edwardian residences. At its centre is ‘The Village’, a group of 19th Century cottages built around a square of central allotments, each one a miniature cottage garden with roses scrambling over flint walls and wooden arches.
Nearby Meads Street with its parade of shops, restaurants, cafes, pubs and Parish Hall is at the heart of the local community.
The sea is just a few minutes’ walk away at the former fishing hamlet of Holywell, set at the foot of the South Downs. There is a cliff top promenade with slopes and steps down to a lower promenade leading to a shingle beach with a café, toilet facilities, beach huts and chalets.
At low tide rock pools are full of marine life and the chalk cliffs of Beachy Head provide a stunning backdrop. This part of Meads Village serves as the gateway to the South Downs National Park, making it the perfect place for walkers, cyclists and runners to enjoy some of the most spectacular scenery in the British Isles.
History of Meads Village
In the early 1800's Meads was still an agricultural hamlet which included three farm houses with their associated buildings. Parts of each of these farms can still be seen. Between 1870 and 1880 Meads merged with the village of East Bourne and two nearby hamlets to form the town of Eastbourne.
East Bourne clustered around St Mary's Church in the Old Town where the Bourne stream rises. South Bourne became part of what is now the town centre at South Street. Sea Houses was situated on the coast just east of the pier. Meads was little changed until the opening of All Saints Convalescent Hospital in 1869. Harriet Brownlow Byron, Mother Foundress of the Community of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, had the vision and drive to provide the first purpose-built seaside convalescent hospital in Great Britain. The All Saints Sisters tended their patients and established a philosophy of care which continued for over a century.
Henry Currey, architect to the 7th Duke of Devonshire, whose family owned much of Eastbourne, produced a town plan for Eastbourne in 1859. The town plan was extended west of Meads by Currey in 1872. It visualised wide tree-lined streets with red briquette pavements trimmed with grass verges. Currey designed the boundary walling in the vernacular of the predominately red brick buildings. English Heritage confirms that there are only six examples in England where this unique relationship exists between the houses and the streetscape. Meads, with its two Conservation Areas, forms one of these distinctive examples.