We know little of the town's layout during the medieval period but we may glimpse, albeit retrospectively, something of the ribbon development around the church and the scattered farmsteads from 17th century maps. Our view of 19th century Eastbourne is much more reliable, drawn as it is from detailed plans of 1816 by William Figg, and the later and even more detailed tithe map of 1842.

Parsonage Barn about 1880

If, in the 18th century, we had stood by St. Mary's Hospital, and looked down Church Street towards St. Mary's Church, the scene would have looked much the same as it had looked for nearly 800 years. The skyline would have been broken by the sweeps of four windmills grinding the corn that had been so important to the town's prosperity centuries before. On the right of Church Street there would have been the Custom House, the Library lower down, and then, on the left, the Lamb Inn with its important assembly room and ballroom. In the valley, by the side of the Bourne Stream, there would have stood the early beginnings of Hurst's Brewery from which wafts of steeped hops would have pervaded the valley, and below that, the old Court House of the hundred, which itself overlooked the watermill and its pond only a short distance downstream.

Many of the earlier houses would have had face-lifts with flint boulder facades, but for all this cosmetic architecture, Eastbourne's prosperity seems to have declined in common with the rest of the county during the 16th and 17th centuries. By now Hailsham, with its regular market, was beginning to flourish more than Eastbourne.

The Star Brewery, Old Town, c 1880

The backcloth would still have been extensive farmland, the farms themselves perpetuating ancient names of possible Saxon origin such as Upwick and Rodmill, the latter being a corruption of Radmeld.

Eastbourne windmills about 1878

Similarly, the layout of the area from the 19th century can be clearly deduced from the detailed record and plans of the tithe map of 1842, which was the most complete survey since the Domesday Survey of 1086. Little development is shown to have taken place since 1816 and the plan depicts a layout which, in essence at least, had persisted for nearly 1,000 years. Bourne was still the main centre around the parish church, and the hub of the area's government, while the three hamlets of Sea Houses, South Bourne and Meads are clearly shown detached - these last being the main areas enlarged in the exciting development of the town in the 19th century.