4 minute read
Seaford Museum
ONE SMALL TOWN, THREE PRIME MINISTERS!
Seaford has provided three Prime Ministers – what other small town could make such a claim? One Prime Minister even has a statue in Parliament Square and another was honoured by being buried in Westminster Abbey.
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The Rt Hon Henry Pelham (1695-1754) was the first of these men. He was returned as MP for Seaford shortly after his 21st birthday by his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, and in due course became Paymaster General and Chancellor of the Exchequer. In an age of great venality, he set an example of integrity in public life. He died most unexpectedly on the eve of a General Election and was remembered as managing the ‘finances with great care and personal purity, an honourable man with no vices’. It is the little remembered George Canning (1770 – 1827) who is the Seaford MP with a statue in Parliament Square. The shortest-serving Prime Minister of all time, dying of pneumonia after only 119 days in office, Lord Byron described him as a ‘genius, almost a universal one, a wit, a poet, and a statesman’. Canning twice served as Foreign Secretary, and played a key role in the war against France. By seizing the Danish fleet, he ensured the supremacy of the British Navy over Napoleon, deemed to be an act of genius by many.
Canning’s Blue Plaque is on Seaford House in Crouch Lane, a recent building on the site of the previous Seaford House where Canning stayed when in Seaford. An MP we can be truly proud of.
If you search carefully in Sutton Road, you will find a Blue Plaque for, arguably, the most famous British Prime Minister of all, Winston Churchill. Winston’s wife, Clementine, had spent a lot of time in Seaford, which was a very happy place for her as a child and they continued to visit for many years. She has her own plaque in Pelham Road. Possibly Seaford has been better known to the Prime Ministers of the land than one might have thought!
If you have seen the Blue Plaques around the town, you may have noticed two plaques recording the other two men. So, who are they and where are the plaques? Photos from top: George Canning; Sir Henry Pelham; William Pitt the Elder.
A gifted orator, the twiceelected William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham (1708 – 1778), MP for Seaford, stayed in the appropriately named Pitt House in the High Street. He had an illustrious career and, when he died, he was awarded the rare honour of a state funeral, together with burial in the Abbey. The plaque is on the side of the house.
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