Uncoloured postcard showing a view of the Grand Parade, Eastbourne, with the landscaping of the parade levels. Ink: [personal message] [address in Birmingham supplied]. Eastbourne was developed as a tourist destination from the mid-19th century; the Duke of Devonshire hired Henry Currey to draw up a plan for the development of the town in 1859. A pier by Eugenius Birch was opened in 1870 but destroyed in a storm in 1877; the seafront was re-landscaped with three pedestrian levels or parades (Marine, Royal, and Grand), and from the 1880s an extensive section became known for its carpet-bedding as the Carpet Gardens; further sections of the same sequence became the Western Lawns (including the Wish Tower, a fortification of the Napoleonic wars), and the Redoubt Gardens (which included a 1930s bandstand). The first municipally-owned park was Hampden Park, opened 1902; Motcombe was donated by the Duke of Devonshire in 1908