Bexhill-on-Sea is a town and seaside resort in the county of East Sussex, in the south of England within the Rother District Council area. it is also known as Bexhill though this tends to refer to the old part of the town on the hill. The Anglo-Saxon name for the settlement was Bexelei from leah a glade, where box grows.
The earliest known occupation of the site come from the discovery of iguanadon fragments and primitive boats at Egerton Park. The town came into official existence with the Charter of 772. In this charter, King Offa II, King of Mercia, granted to Bishop Oswald land to build a church. Three hundred years later around 1066, William the Conqueror gave the Rape of Hasting , including the captured town of Bexhill to Robert, Count of Eu as the spoils of victory.
The church owned Bexhill Manor until Queen Elizabeth I acquired it in 1590 and granted it to Thomas Sackville of Buckhurst . Thomas became the 1st Earl of Dorset in 1603.
Bexhill remained a agricultural area until the late 1880s. It was then transformed into a trendy beach-side resort in the same manner as near-by Brighton had in earlier times. It is around this time that the name Bexhill-on-Sea began to be used. Bexhill was the location for the first motor race in the United Kingdom, in 1902.
The town is the location of The De La Warr Pavilion, an early British example of modern architecture. Comedian Eddie Izzard spent part of his childhood years in Bexhill-on-Sea and Spike Milligan lived in the town for a time, as did James Bond actor (as 'Q') Desmond Llewelyn who lived in the town until his death in 1999.
