Central Methodist Church

The former Central Methodist Church was until 2018 the main Methodist place of worship in Eastbourne, a town and borough in the English county of East Sussex. The large town-centre building, with attached schoolrooms and ancillary buildings, was the successor to earlier Methodist places of worship in the area. Soldiers brought the denomination to the area in 1803, when an isolated collection of clifftop villages stood where the 19th-century resort town of Eastbourne developed. A society they formed in that year to encourage Methodism's growth and outreach survives. Local Methodist worshipper and historian Carlos Crisford designed the lavish church in 1907, and it has been used for worship ever since—even as several other Methodist churches in the town and surrounding villages have declined and closed. For several years until 2013, it also housed a Baptist congregation displaced from their own church building. Central Methodist Church is a Grade II listed building.