EASTBOURNE BOROUGH COUNCIL

DE

EASTBOURNE BOROUGH COUNCIL

1691-1974

Archive of Eastbourne Borough Council and its predecessors, arranged by the Council's departments as they existed on its formation in 1974. Pre-1974 documents have been assigned to the department which deposited or inherited them or which was closest in function to the pre-1974 department creating them.

DE/A Secretary's Department

DE/B Treasurer's Department

DE/C Planning and Technical Services Department

<p>Published studies bearing on local government in Eastbourne include: George F Chambers, East Bourne memories of the Victorian period, 1845 to 1901 (Eastbourne, V T Sumfield, 1910); H W Fovargue, Municipal Eastbourne: a selection from the proceedings of the Town Council, 1883-1933 (Eastbourne CBC, 1933); J C Aspden, A municipal history of Eastbourne 1938-1974 (Eastbourne Borough Council, 1977); and D Cannadine, Lords and landlords: the aristocracy and the towns 1774-1967 (Leicester University Press, 1980), pt. 3, 'The Devonshires and Eastbourne', mainly for 1849-1914.</p>

English

132 classes; about 1750 files

Documents are closed to public inspection for 30 years from the last date of a document, or for such longer period as indicated for a specific series or file.

Local government functions were discharged by a Vestry Meeting until poor law administration passed to the Eastbourne Board of Guardians in 1835 (see G/13), the Burial Board was constituted in 1854, and the Local Board for the District of the Parish of Eastbourne was elected in 1859 under the Local Government Act 1858. The Local Board petitioned for incorporation under the Municipal Corporations Act 1882, and a charter was granted to the Borough of Eastbourne in 1883. The Borough gained county borough status in 1911, under the Eastbourne Corporation Act 1910, with its boundary extended to take in part of Willingdon. The County Borough Council assumed the functions of the Burial Board in 1912 and of the Board of Guardians in 1930. It was abolished in 1974 and succeeded, with an enlarged territory, by Eastbourne Borough Council, a district within the Administrative County of East Sussex. Records of all these authorities are to be found in this archive.