Seaford was at one time touted as a potential rival to Brighton as the premier resort on Sussex’s coast.

But instead of being a seaside town, it has changed over the last half century into a town by the sea.

It has few hotels or guest houses despite having dozens of them before the Second World War. The seafront has no amusements and the beach is a shadow of its former self.

The Esplanade Hotel, an imposing building on the seafront, was built in 1891 as part of a proposed major redevelopment by Victorian speculators which never really took place.

It played host to King Edward VII and was one reason Seaford was considered a sedate resort. But as most visitors preferred somewhere livelier, its fortunes declined and it was taken over by squatters. Fire destroyed it in 1976.

The beach used to be noted for its golden sand at low tide and for safe swimming. But when a long arm was built at Newhaven Harbour, the beach became denuded of sand.

In 1987, it was replenished with tons of pebbles which acted as coastal protection but which covered all the groynes which had provided shelter for sunbathers. It also made the beach steep for swimmers.

Every now and then, great storms would take away the pebbles again as happened in February this year but they were always replaced.

The building of the Buckle bypass in the 1960s succeeded in taking traffic off the western seafront but also made it rather quiet.

Meanwhile the railway, which had opened more than a century earlier, was reduced to a single line with few direct trains to London.

Another big change after the war as the disappearance of nearly all the private schools which used to ring Seaford. There were seven in less than a mile travelling east through Sutton.

Owners found they could obtain more money by building houses in the grounds and only a couple are left.

The Broad Street shopping centre suffered as major new retail warehouses opened in Newhaven and a supermarket was built near Seaford station on the site of the Ritz cinema.

By the end of the century, Seaford had stopped being a seaside resort and even the coastal pubs were closing. The front, with ugly gaps, looked as if a bomb had hit it.

Only the Martello Tower, last of a chain stretching east towards Kent, gave any life to the seafront when it was opened as a museum.

Few holidaymakers stopped at Seaford but residents loved the place. The population doubled in the last half century reaching over 23,000.

While neighbouring Newhaven sank into depression with plenty of poverty and a partially abandoned town centre, Seaford seemed content and prosperous.

It might have lost its cinema, hotels, schools and much of the beach but with the lasting beauty of the Downs and the sea to be seen from many homes, it was regarded by many as a good place to live.