Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SlimVirgin (talk | contribs) at 04:42, 8 November 2004. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Broadstairs is a town in Kent, England. Between Margate and Ramsgate, Broadstairs is one of the seaside resorts on the Isle of Thanet.

The town lies above a harbour, historically known for smuggling. More recently, Charles Dickens was a frequent visitor and the house, now called Bleak House, in which he wrote David Copperfield can be visited. Legend has it that if you leave a note for Dickens in the top drawer of the writing desk in what used to be his study, he will come during the night to read it. During the summer months, letters to Dickens can be found there from all over the world. But they are always gone by the morning . . . Bleak house

Broadstairs - a summary

Broadstairs is a popular resort for holidays and day trippers; it is near Dover and Canterbury, and within an hour's drive of the M25, London's orbital motorway.

Broadstairs has seven beautiful bays of golden sand, the main one Viking Bay, which has won many awards, including the European Blue Flag. The others include Louisa Bay, Dumpton Gap, Botany Bay, Stone Bay and Joss Bay. People comment that Broadstairs has changed very little over the past century, an asset that brings visitors back time and again. The town's wealth of history makes it a popular destination in the summer months.

Broadstairs has a small cinema in Harbour Street and a fine venue nearby called the Pavilion on the Sands, which hosts a summer show as well as all-year entertainment, and which offers an extensive view across the bay.

The town's water gala in August has been a part of the summer calendar for more than 117 years. There is also a Dickens festival each June and a folk festival and craft fair every August.

As a child, Queen Victoria spent many summers in Broadstairs staying at Pierremont Hall.

Notable residents

Former Conservative leader and Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath was born in Broadstairs.

Charles Dickens frequently holidayed there.

Oliver Postgate, creator of the childrens' TV puppet shows, the Clangers and Bagpuss, is reported to be living there.

History of Broadstairs

Reference to the Culmer family is found in the pages of a Thanet history book, Mockett's Journal (1836) by John Mockett (1775~1848). Mention is made by Mockett of the will of a Richard Culmer, a carpenter in 1434. Shortly thereafter, in 1440, an archway was built by George Culmer across a track leading down to the sea, where the first wooden pier or jetty was built in 1460. A more enduring structure was to replace this in 1538.

The Culmers nestled their boatyard on these protected sands. It was in 1538 that the road leading to the seafront, known as Harbour Street, was cut into the rough chalk ground Broadstairs is built upon. This was accomplished by the local shipwright George Culmer. Going further in defence of the town, he built the York Gate in 1540, a portal that still spans Harbour Street, and which then held two heavy wooden doors that could be closed in times of threat from the sea. By 1795, York Gate needed repair to repel any threat from the French Revolutionary Wars; the subsequent renovation was undertaken by Lord Hanniker in the same year as the first lightship was placed on the Goodwin Sands.

A brief outline of the history of Broadstairs Pier is given in Broadstairs, past and present, which mentions a storm in 1767, during which Culmer's work was all but destroyed. At this time it was of considerable importance to the fishing trade with catches as far afield as Yarmouth, Hastings, Folkestone, Dover and Torbay and elsewhere being landed. It had become so indispensable that the Corporations of Yarmouth, Dover, Hythe and Canterbury with assistance from the East India Company and Trinity House subscribed to its restoration with a payment of £2,000/~ in 1774.

Maritime history

1): On the occasion of the landing at Thanet, of Major John Percy, on June 21, 1815 with the captured French Eagle Standard taken at Waterloo, a tunnel stairway -- from the beach to the fields on the clifftops above -- was excavated, and christened Waterloo Stairs to commemorate the event. Broadstairs was the first town in England to learn of this historic victory.

2): With the closure of the Culmer~White boatyard at Broadstairs in 1824, boatbuilding operations were transferred to the Isle of Wight where the firm of J. Samuel White became established.

It has been suggested that news of the loss of the Irish Packet Royal Adelaide with 250 lives, on the sands off Margate on April 6, 1850, prompted old Thomas White to present one of his lifeboats to his home town of Broadstairs that summer. A ballad was written to celebrate the occasion, Song of the Mary White. The lifeboat saw its first use on March 6, 1851 when the brig Mary White became trapped on the Goodwin Sands during a severe gale blowing from the north.

3):In 1841, 44 mariners were recorded as resident in Broadstairs, nine of these being specified as fishermen, and of course the residual boat-building activity that remained after the Culmer~White yard closed still continued, though there were only four shipwrights recorded in the census: Solomon Holbourn and Joseph Jarman among them.

Others may have been elsewhere on census day. Steamer Point, as the pier head at Broadstairs was then known, would have been fairly busy with shipping movements, with consignments of coal and other produce traded thereabouts. There were also the regular visits of the steam packet from Ramsgate.

Mixed feelings must have been strongly expressed by the Thanet boatmen in general, as the unrivalled speed of the steam packet was outmanoeuvring all other classes of vessel, but brought a new prosperity to Thanet.

The steamboats had begun to take over from the hoys and sailing packets about 1814 and like all new-fangled devices were accepted readily by some and despised by others. However, the sailing hoys might take anything up to 72 hours to reach Margate from London, while steamships were capable of making at least nine voyages in this time!

Ramsgate (The Kent Coast at its best) Pictorially Presented a "guide book" of the 1930s, by A H Simison, a photographic chemist, in its section on Broadstairs describes the town as having developed "always with a consistent policy of retaining those characteristics for which it has for so long been renowned".

Although there were numerous holidaymakers staying in all three of the Thanet towns during the Victorian era, there was to be no railway link until 1863. While William Sackett and John Derby operated as the Bradstowe Coachmasters, nearby Whitstable had begun its railway service as early as 1830, one of the first in England, with its pioneering Stephenson's engine The Invicta and by 1851 the basic local rail network had been put in place. This largely comprised the London to south-coast route, with a coastal link from Chichester to Ramsgate, the cross-country service between London and Dover, and the mid-Kent route linking Redhill, Tonbridge and Ashford, with a new terminal at Waterloo opened in 1848. It was not until 1860 that Victoria Station was completed, followed by Charing Cross and Cannon Street.

The Shrine of Our Lady, Bradstowe is another important topic in the town's history.

• English seaside resorts
• Towns in Kent