EASTBOURNE’S oldest public building is one of a number of sites to be granted listed status.

When it was first built in 1863, Leaf Hall Working Men’s Institute included a coffee room, lending library, reading room, smoking room, lecture room to accommodate 200 and even a skittle yard.

The hall came about thanks to wealth silk merchant and philanthropist, William Laidler Leaf. Although a Londoner, he had a holiday on Eastbourne’s Grand Parade and realised the area had no place for its working class and unemployed residents to go.

When the resort was redeveloped in the 1860s he approached his friend, the 7th Duke of Devonshire, to donate land and Leaf Hall was built.

Today the church-like structure is used as a community centre.