Esplanade Hotel
Leaving the compass and the site of Seaford Battery, you are now approaching the first 1/2 mile point or 4.5 mile point if you are on the return leg. Moving west towards Frankie’s Kiosk with its al fresco seating area (good coffee and tea) you pass the junction with the Causeway. It’s here that the Council have introduced their “Gateway Seaford”, an imaginatively signed path leading to the town’s main shopping area.
In the late 1770s the Causeway had on its easterly corner the Assembly Rooms and Baths, and little else. On the western corner and extending along the esplanade is the site of the former Esplanade Hotel, a splendid french chateau-like building. Unfortunately it burnt down in 1976.
The Esplanade Hotel formed part of the grandiose plans of the Seaford Bay Estate Company. Formed in 1886 the Company controlled covered a triangular plot of land with sea frontage from Dane Road (west of you) to Splash Point. However few of the plans came to fruition and in 1898 the company collapsed, but not before the Esplanade hotel had been built.
Later a new west wing for the Esplanade replaced the Assembly Roms.
At one time a pier was proposed opposite the hotel but that never materialised either. In 1901 Mrs Hindle, the manageress of the Esplanade Hotel at the time, died after falling into the hotel’s lift shaft.
Famous visitors included King Edward VII and the Duke and Duchess of Sparta (later to become King Constantine and Queen Sophie of Greece.
Slighty further on the other side of the road through a gate in the concrete wall you will find the Beach Garden created by the Seaford Community Partnership. It provides a little shelter from the winds off the sea and is maintained by volunteers.
Carrying on to the 3/4mile mile marker opposite the end of Dane Road you will find the site of the former Telsemaure, a house once owned by one of Seaford’s other developers.