The former Central Methodist Church was until 2018 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, was 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 housed a Baptist congregation displaced from their own church building. Central Methodist Church is a Grade II listed building.
A reorganisation of Methodist worship in the Eastbourne area and closer links with the United Reformed Church led to the formation of a Local ecumenical partnership in early 2018 between Central Methodist Church, Greenfield Methodist Church and two United Reformed congregations, which all came together under the name Emmanuel Church. Worship was consolidated at one of the buildings pending a rebuilding project to provide a new church and community building, and the other premises—including Central Methodist Church—were vacated. The church was then occupied by a Pentecostal group, which has renamed the premises Deliverance Centre Eastbourne and which continues to use the church as its main place of worship.
History
Origins of Methodism in Eastbourne Until 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.
Sea Houses grew in importance in the late 18th century nevertheless. A row of houses was built facing the sea in about 1790, and the area soon assumed strategic importance in the defence of the south coast against Napoleonic invaders. By the end of the 18th century, troops were sent to Hastings, Bexhill and Southbourne, and a chain of Martello towers was built. Soldiers from the 11th Hussars (known by that time as the 11th Regiment of Light Dragoons) reached Eastbourne in July 1803, and a newspaper report of 5 October 1803 noted that "everything here is on the alert to receive the enemy: the whole of the 11th Light Dragoons have been ordered from their different outposts, and are stationed at Hastings, Bexhill and Southbourne [... and] the Sussex and Gloucester Militias [... made] entrenchments at Sea Houses".
These soldiers were almost certainly the founders of Methodist worship in the Eastbourne area. Local Methodist historian Carlos Crisford, who later designed Central Methodist Church, first made this claim, and subsequent research has found that there was no Methodist presence before 1803. The first Nonconformist chapel in the Eastbourne area was the "Marsh Chapel", registered in the late 18th century to a group described simply as Calvinists: at the time this could refer either to Calvinistic Baptists or to Methodists following Calvinist theology, such as those who were aligned to the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion. The Marsh Chapel's later history proves that it had no Methodist connection, though: after a period of tension between different factions in the congregation, the church split into two: Independents stayed in the building, and Strict Baptists moved elsewhere and founded a new church. The Marsh Chapel was therefore of Calvinistic Baptist character.
A group of these soldiers registered themselves as Dissenters, as was required by the laws of the time; this allowed them to establish a place of worship in one of the houses built in 1790 at Sea Houses, where they were stationed. In 1803, they founded the "Society of the People Called Methodists" to encourage the spread of their beliefs in the Eastbourne area. The house does not survive: the mid 19th-century buildings at 27 and 28 Marine Parade are on the site.
Many of the troops were posted away from Sea Houses in 1804. Their services had interested the local civilian population, though, and with the help of shopowner Henry Beck the Society and community continued to thrive after the soldiers' withdrawal. Beck moved from nearby Lewes in 1804 and set up a shop in Sea Houses; he joined the Society and became an important member of the Methodist community: by 1813 he was one of the first recorded Methodist preachers in Sussex. In 1808, Rev. Robert Pilter, known as the "Apostle of Kent" for his Methodist missionary work in that county, became associated with the Eastbourne cause, and further helped its development.
Pilter used his experience of establishing a Methodist chapel at Brighton to help the community acquire their first permanent place of worship. He was called to minister elsewhere in Sussex before he could buy a plot of land, but his successor was able to do so almost immediately: in September 1809 Rev. Robert Wheeler paid £145 (equivalent to £ in ) for the site in the Southbourne area, where the present Grove Road runs. The Anglican Diocese of Chichester recorded the chapel's existence in its Records of Dissenting Chapels published on 9 March 1810, and it officially opened 19 days later. The cost of construction was £861 (equivalent to £ in ). In the chapel's early years, locals and the remaining soldiers were joined by increasing numbers of wealthy visitors who were attracted to the growing town of Eastbourne by its new reputation as a high-class resort; £8.10s.- (£ in ) had to be spent on extensions soon after it opened.
Difficulties soon arose though: in 1815, the Napoleonic Wars ended and all soldiers posted to Eastbourne left, depriving the chapel of some of its followers. In 1817, Henry Beck moved to Hastings to evangelise that town, which had no Methodist place of worship. Debt was also a problem: the interest rate on the borrowings for the chapel's construction was 5%. The chapel's transfer from the Brighton Methodist Circuit to the much larger Lewes Circuit in 1825 caused disruption, storm damage in the 1840s meant services had to be held in the open air for a time, and the congregation reached a low point in 1860.
Pevensey Road Chapel Nevertheless, most debt had been paid off by then, and members of the chapel decided to build a new church nearer the newly developed centre of the town. By 1860, the seafront area east of Sea Houses, with its new promenade, was the new focal point of Eastbourne, where increasing numbers of visitors and newly arrived residents congregated.
The cause was helped by lay preacher Thomas Scott's efforts to secure a permanent resident preacher for Eastbourne's Methodist population. This was achieved in 1860, at which time the Lewes Methodist Circuit was renamed "Lewes and Eastbourne" to reflect the latter town's growing importance. Scott also contributed £25 (£ in ) to the building fund for the proposed new church, and was instrumental in encouraging the idea.
Pevensey Road had just been laid out across the fields of a farm whose land was owned by the Duke of Devonshire and leased to tenant farmers. Eastbourne's Methodists acquired an plot in 1863, and building work started almost immediately: Sir Francis Lycett, an important figure in 19th-century Methodism, placed the foundation stone on 11 November 1863. Architect R.K. Blessley designed the Decorated Gothic Revival flint and stone building. Amid scenes of celebration, Pevensey Road Chapel was opened in July 1864; it cost £1,874.16s.7d (£ in ), and the freehold of the site was acquired later for £150. The old chapel at Grove Road was sold to a Strict Baptist congregation, who used it from May 1865 until 1880 when they opened the present Grove Road Strict Baptist Chapel nearby.
Congregations grew slowly—not helped by a scarlet fever epidemic which killed many people in 1864 and frightened many visitors away from the town—but the Methodist community was fully established in the town by this time and began to expand its reach. A new Sunday school was opened behind the chapel in 1869, and in the surrounding villages and the new suburbs of Eastbourne, several Methodist chapels were founded or became associated with the Eastbourne cause. This was helped by the creation in 1871 of a separate Eastbourne Circuit—a much smaller administrative area than its Lewes and Eastbourne predecessor.
The new Central Church By 1896, the chapel had more than 250 regular members, and in summer there was not enough room to accommodate all the visitors who wanted to worship. By the end of the century, trustees of the chapel began to consider extending the building to add at least 200 more seats; and by 1902, a grander plan was announced to replace the chapel with a 1,000-capacity "central church", to act as the centre for Eastbourne Methodists' scheme of "aggressive evangelism" among tourists, the ever-growing permanent population and other chapels in the Eastbourne Circuit. Members of the church formed a committee in late 1902 to consider how best to proceed and to establish and look after a fund to pay for whatever work was decided on.
Pevensey Road Chapel was declared structurally unsound in 1904, and more than £3,000 was available in the building fund. Another committee was formed in that year to oversee the demolition of the chapel and its replacement with a much larger church and schoolroom. Permission to knock the chapel down was granted in 1906, and on 1 April 1907 work began on the new buildings with the laying of the Sunday school foundation stone. Labour politician Arthur Henderson , himself a Methodist, addressed a public meeting at Eastbourne Town Hall to commemorate the stone-laying, and people were encouraged to contribute to the building fund by laying a shilling on the stones. Services were not disrupted during the building works: after the old chapel was demolished, churchgoers worshipped in the former Sunday school hall.
By early 1908, the new Sunday school was finished, and work began on the church itself: the foundation stone was laid on 14 April 1908. Construction took five months and cost about £15,000 (£ in ), leaving a debt of £11,600: some of the building fund had been used to establish new Methodist churches in outlying parts of Eastbourne. Rev. John Scott Lidgett , the President of the Wesleyan Conference at the time, opened the new Central Methodist Church on 16 September 1908. Carlos Crisford himself designed it, and the Eastbourne building firm Miller and Selmes constructed the church. The building had a tall corner tower topped with a spire; to celebrate the opening, a group of worshippers of all ages were hauled in a box to the top of the spire, where they ate breakfast.