There were many outward signs of Burne-Jones's success in the 1880s. In 1879 he was elected to the Athenaeum Club under a rule by which distinguished men were invited to join without application. The following year he was able to buy a country retreat at Rottingdean, near Brighton on the Sussex coast (fig. 93). In 1881 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, and in 1883 he and Morris were made honorary Fellows of their old college, Exeter.
EB-J and GB-j purchased the house next door in 1888
The Burne-Jones's bought the house on the right as a country retreat in 1880. About 1889 they acquired the smaller house on the left and the connecting part was built by W A S Benson. The house remains much the same today. Rudyard Kipling, Burne-Jones's nephew by marriage, came to live at The Elms, the house behind the wall on the far right of the picture, in 1897.