History
The name Beachy Head appears as 'Beauchef' in 1274, and was 'Beaucheif' in 1317, becoming consistently Beachy Head by 1724, and has nothing to do with beach. Instead it is a corruption of the original French words meaning "beautiful headland".
In 1929 Eastbourne bought 4,000 acres (16 km2) of land surrounding Beachy Head to save it from development at a cost of about £100,000.
The prominence of Beachy Head has made it a landmark for sailors in the English Channel. It is noted as such in the sea shanty Spanish Ladies:
- "The first land we sighted was called the Dodman,
- Next Rame Head off Plymouth, off Portsmouth the Wight;
- We sailed by Beachy, by Fairlight and Dover,
- And then we bore up for the South Foreland light."
The ashes of German social scientist and philosopher Friedrich Engels, one of the fathers of communism, were scattered off the cliffs at Beachy Head into the Channel, as he had requested.
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“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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