Beecroft Art Gallery

Prior to 2014, the gallery was located in an Edwardian building on Station Road at Westcliff-on-Sea, opposite the Cliffs Pavilion, and which was donated to the people of Southend-on-Sea in 1952 by Walter Beecroft (1885 1961) to house his eclectic collection of art works. Beecroft was a solicitor in nearby Leigh. He had already set up an Art Gallery Sub-Committee of the Public Libraries & Museum Committee in 1928, and in 1947 he proposed to endow a building to become an Art Gallery. Eventually, this led to the Beecroft Art Gallery on Station Road. Beecroft also endowed the Beecroft Bequest, an art purchase fund administered by the Museums Association. The gallery was resited in 2014 to the…

The building was designed as a library by the council's architect, Patrick R. Burrough, as part of the new Southend Civic Centre complex. The Civic Complex would encompass a new police station, the courthouse, council offices and chamber, a new College and a Library on a site first purchased by the council in 1919 for a further education college, but had been reallocated as a town hall site in 1934. The planned fire station for the site was dropped and it built in Sutton Road. The Central Library opened in 1974, moving from the former free library located next door which had been opened in 1905.