THE ENGLISH MONTE CARLO

Michael Montagu visits Bexhill-on-Sea, home to the UK's first motor racing festival

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What comes into your head when you think of Monte Carlo? The sparkling blue Mediterranean, sunshine, gambling, life deluxe in a premier tax haven? Or perhaps you recall what William Somerset Maugham said about Monte Carlo and the French Riviera in general? “A sunny place for shady people.” Now, what does Bexhill-on-Sea in East Sussex conjure up for you? Grey skies, a pebbly beach and the modernist style De La Warr Pavilion, seen in Poirot’s ABC Murders? When there recently, there was a touch of the Mediterranean. The sun was shining, the sea was blue, and my friend and I enjoyed excellent coffee and homemade cake in a little beachside cafe.

However, to those who know Bexhill now, it may be somewhat mind-stretching to realise that the 7th Earl De La Warr tried to turn it into the English Monte Carlo. The first recorded reference to Bexhill, then called Bexelei, was in a charter of King Offa of Mercia in AD792, when he built a church. The Domesday Book of 1086 tells us that before the Norman Conquest of 1066, the manor was worth £20. By 1086 that had decreased to £18 10s and was described as “waste”.

Queen Elizabeth I became owner of the manor in 1561, giving it in 1564 to Sir Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset. Later, the Sackville family was advanced to dukes of Dorset. They owned Bexhill until the middle of the 19th century. In 1813, Elizabeth Sackville married the 5th Earl De La Warr. The Dorset dukedom died out through lack of male heirs in 1865, so Lord and Lady De La Warr found themselves owners of a small seaside settlement.

Reginald Sackville became the 7th Earl De La Warr in 1873. A Church of England clergyman, he was chaplain to Queen Victoria between 1846-65. He was also a rich landowner and a man with an ambition, to turn Bexhill into a fashionable seaside resort. To be, in fact, the English Monte Carlo.