Bexhill-on-Sea put-in (Rother)

Bexhill sits on the open English Channel coast, roughly six miles west of Hastings and a similar distance east of Eastbourne and Beachy Head, with the low shoreline running on toward Cooden and Normans Bay. The frontage faces south across open water, with no harbour, estuary or lock, and no bar or buoyed channel to navigate.

The sea off Bexhill lies within the Beachy Head East Marine Conservation Zone, a 195 km² site designated in May 2019 that runs from Beachy Head towards Hastings and extends beyond six nautical miles offshore. It protects a mosaic of chalk, sandstone reef, subtidal sand and coarse sediment, along with vulnerable blue mussel beds and Ross worm (Sabellaria) reef, and is recorded as an important nursery area for herring, plaice and Dover sole. Native oyster and the short-snouted seahorse are among the species found within it.

The Grade I listed De La Warr Pavilion stands on the seafront close to the launch. Designed by Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff with engineer Felix Samuely and opened in 1935, it was among the first public buildings in Britain built with a welded steel frame rather than a conventional concrete one.