Nearly two centuries ago, an up-and-coming architect whose designs had already laid the foundations for the blossoming of the Bloomsbury area of London, bought a stretch of coastline near Hastings and proceeded to build his own upmarket seaside resort.

James Burton was the man who made St Leonards-on-Sea, a “Bloomsbury by the sea” built on a piece of Sussex farmland he bought in 1827.

Perhaps inspired by the popularity of the new seaside resort of Brighton further down the coast, the building of St Leonards began the following year.

It was a new town of elegant villas, artfully sited around a wooded valley called Old Woman’s Tap Shaw, including a property for Burton himself called West Villa (now 57 Marina).

There were seafront terraces, shops, laundries and a pub called The Horse & Groom in a service area called Mercatoria. There was an elegant pillared assembly room, now called the Masonic Hall, an archery, a church, public gardens, a new road, and an archway marking the town’s boundary with Hastings.

When James Burton died in 1837, his son Decimus, already a renowned architect in his own right for his work in Regent’s Park and his layouts of London Zoo, Hyde Park and Kew Gardens, moved into St Leonards and extended it with elegant double villas built around private gardens and many other fine examples of different architectural styles.

The burgeoning town not only attracted the wealthy to its great villas, but also many working class people who found jobs in domestic service, in the shops, and in industries such as building and the railways.

The construction reached Hastings in 1875 and the two began to merge, although it’s clear now that there are still two very different St Leonards: the wider town, and its original centre, known as Burtons’ St Leonards.

Neo-classical style

Visitors today still marvel at the architectural splendour of buildings such as the Royal Victoria Hotel – the Burtons’ landmark building on the seafront with neo-classical colonnaded terraces nearby. Other notable structures include the Burton double villas, such as The Uplands, the colourful terraces of Stanhope Place, and the fine Gothic-style villa named the Clock House, because it housed the town’s official time piece.

The original tollgate, North Lodge, later became home to the King Solomon’s Mines author Henry Rider Haggard. You can also see the Gothic villas of Maze Hill and Uplands School, a crescent of 13 fine houses on The Mount, and the pink-and-white Crown House, the first house to be built in St Leonards.

Many describe the town’s relationship to Hastings as that of Hove to Brighton: “a genteel, residential annexe from the main action”, according to one commentator. Or “one part retired great-aunt, one part rogueish Regency bounder, two parts 20s Bright Young Thing and a dash of 60s hippy”, writes another.

St Leonards may be a unique experiment of Regency town planning and garden landscaping, but 250 years since the birth of its founder, the legacy of James Burton and his son Decimus continues to be threatened with destruction.

Their legacy is fiercely protected by The Burtons’ St Leonards Society, which this year has been fighting to stop a new housing development in the Archery Grounds, the former site of elegant villas, whose destruction in the 1960s led to the founding of the society in 1970.

Up until then, The Archery Grounds had been home to the St Leonards Archers, who were presented with a special banner by Princess Victoria.

It had been an open, public space flanked by villas and, the Society says, an important component of Burtons’ original St Leonards.

The gardens were bulldozed to make way for the multi-storey Hastings College building, which outraged conservationists, including high-profile supporters, such as the poet John Betjeman and the historian Lady Longford.

Backed by bodies such as the Civic Trust, the Georgian Group and Hastings Borough Council, they all came together to ensure the protection of Burtons’ St Leonards in the future.

Landmark building

Before the protection society’s founding, the town had sadly already lost several other important landmark buildings: the archway marking the boundary between St Leonards and Hastings, the baths built between the Royal Victoria Hotel and the sea, a pair of graceful villas flanking the Assembly Rooms and the first National School built in 1834.

But the society succeeded in having “Little Bloomsbury by the Sea” designated a Conservation Area, and since its formation has saved many other important buildings from demolition, including Gloucester Lodge, named after its first occupant Princess Sophia of Gloucester, Gensing Manor, and Decimus Burton’s Italianate Baston Lodge.

“We’re not just a preservation society, though,” says the Society’s Bernard McGinley. “James Burton was the exemplar of a successful Georgian builder. He took an empty stretch of the Sussex coast and transformed it into a lively town that has known extremes of fortune and is again on the up. He deserves recognition.”

The Society is careful to point out that it is not opposed to all development in Burtons’ St Leonards. Its aims are clearly defined: to encourage the conservation of the work of James and Decimus Burton, and to stimulate a high standard of town planning, and only to oppose “unsympathetic” development.

Today, the Burtons’ St Leonards Society is even more determined to protect this unique enclave of Regency splendour, and its gala dinners are attended by supporters as distinguished as its patron, Princess Katarina of Yugoslavia, Guy Fearon, a kinsman of James and Decimus Burton, and Hastings and Rye MP Amber Rudd.

“St Leonards is a fine and handsome town,” says Mr McGinley. “It’s also very under-rated, like Notting Hill used to be. But mark my words: it’s an up-and-coming place.”

Factfile For more about the Burtons’ St Leonards Society, visit www.burtons stleonardssociety.co.uk.