Broadstairs
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Broadstairs | |
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| Population | 24,370 |
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| OS grid reference | |
| District | Thanet |
| Shire county | Kent |
| Region | South East |
| Constituent country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | BROADSTAIRS |
| Postcode district | CT10 |
| Dial code | 01843 |
| Police | Kent |
| Fire | Kent |
| Ambulance | South East Coast |
| UK Parliament | South Thanet |
| European Parliament | South East England |
| List of places: UK • England • Kent | |
Broadstairs is a town in Kent, England, 76 miles east of London, with a population of about 22,000. Situated between Margate and Ramsgate, it is one of the seaside resorts on the Isle of Thanet, often known as the "Jewel in Thanet's crown". Broadstairs derives its name from the Anglo-Saxon word Bradstow(e).
As a civil parish, it includes the St. Peter's area and is known as Broadstairs and St. Peters, which had a population of 24,370 according to the 2001 census.
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[edit] Geography
The town lies above a harbour, historically known for smuggling. Some 20 miles from both Dover and Canterbury, and approximately 60 miles from the M25, London's orbital motorway, it is a popular resort for daytrippers and holidaymakers. It has seven bays of golden sand, which are Viking Bay, Louisa Bay, Kingsgate Bay, Dumpton Gap, Botany Bay, Stone Bay and Joss Bay. Broadstairs has changed very little over the past fifty years, a feature that brings visitors back time and again. Nearby, with its beach below, is Kingsgate Castle once the home of Lord Holland, but now converted into private residences. Several follies of the castle still exist within the area.
[edit] Government
Broadstairs is governed by Thanet District Council.
[edit] Attractions
There is a small cinema "The Palace Cinema" (formerly known as the The Windsor) in Harbour Street and a 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 Charles Dickens festival each June and a folk festival and craft fair every August. The beaches at Botany Bay and Joss Bay have both been awarded the Blue flag rural beach award in 2005. Viking Bay beach, the main beach in Broadstairs, won the Blue Flag in 2006. The beach has a number of cafes and ice cream outlets. There are regular firework displays on Wednesday evenings in the summer. There are also many schools around the area including St Mildreds infant school, Upton Junior School, Dane Court Grammar School and St Georges C of E Foundation School. The Charles Dickens School is also in the area and is named after Charles Dickens who visited the Broadstairs.
[edit] Famous residents
Charles Dickens was a frequent visitor and Bleak House, where he wrote David Copperfield, towers above the town. There is a legend 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 when the house was a museum (it is now a private dwelling again and closed to the public), letters to Dickens could be found there from all over the world.
The town has seen some notable residents, including former Conservative leader and Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath and the engineer Thomas Russell Crampton, who were born in Broadstairs. Queen Victoria spent many summers in Broadstairs as a child, staying at Pierremont Hall. Oliver Postgate, creator of the children's TV puppet shows, the Clangers and Bagpuss, is reported to be living there.
[edit] History
[edit] 1400-1600
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, when the road leading to the seafront, known as Harbour Street, was cut into the rough chalk ground on which Broadstairs is built, by another 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.
[edit] 1700-1815
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 Great 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.
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.
On the occasion of the landing at Thanet, of Major John Percy, on 21 June 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.
[edit] Development as a seaside resort
By 1824 steamboats were becoming more common, having begun to take over from the hoys and sailing packets about 1814. These made trade with London much faster. The familiar sailing hoys took anything up to 72 hours to reach Margate from London, whereas the new steamships were capable of making at least nine voyages in this time! Mixed feelings must have been strongly expressed by the Thanet boatmen in general, as the unrivaled speed of the steam packet was outmanoeuvering all other classes of vessel, but it brought a new prosperity to Thanet.
[edit] Railways
Although numerous holidaymakers were attracted to Broadstairs and to other Thanet seaside towns during the Victorian era, it was not directly served by rail until 1863. This was time of great expansion for railways in the south-east; in 1860 Victoria Station had been completed, followed by Charing Cross and Cannon Street. Rail access to Broadstairs had previously relied heavily upon coach links to other rail stations in the district or region; with firms such as Bradstowe Coachmasters, operated by William Sackett and John Derby, principally involved. Their coaches connected Broadstairs to Whitstable station where a railway service had begun as early as 1830 (one of the first in England, with its pioneering Stephenson's engine The Invicta). By 1851, the region's network was still more complete, being supplemented by the London to south-coast route, including the coastal link from Chichester to Ramsgate, the cross-country service between London and Dover, and the mid-Kent line that linked Redhill, Tonbridge and Ashford to London's new terminal at Waterloo (opened in 1848). Broadstairs station (unlike neighbouring Margate) is a good 15 minutes walk from the beach. Although rebuilt in the 1920s electricity was not installed at the station until well into the 1970s and the buildings and platforms remained gaslit until then.
[edit] 1840-1900
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 in 1824 (under pressure from the steamships), still continued (though there were only four shipwrights recorded in the census: Solomon Holbourn and Joseph Jarman among them). Others may have been at sea on census day: Steamer Point, as the pier head at Broadstairs was then known, would have been fairly busy with shipping movements since consignments of coal and other produce would have been traded along the coast and there would have been regular work on the steam packet to and from Ramsgate.
[edit] Present
A "guide book" of the 1930s by A H Simison (the photographic chemist) entitled Ramsgate (The Kent Coast at its best) Pictorially Presented, describes Broadstairs town as having approached modernisation and urban development "always with a consistent policy of retaining those characteristics for which it has for so long been renowned". Certainly the town has retained a great many aspects of historical interest, besides its maritime history. Amongst these is its notable religious history, evoked by places such as the Shrine of Our Lady, Bradstowe.
[edit] Lifeboats
Lifeboats arrived in Broadstairs in 1851. It has been suggested that news of the loss of the Irish Packet Royal Adelaide with 250 lives, on the sands off Margate on 6 April 1850, was the prompt that led to old Thomas White to present one of his lifeboats to his home town of Broadstairs that summer. The lifeboat saw its first use on 6 March 1851 when the brig Mary White became trapped on the Goodwin Sands during a severe gale blowing from the north. A ballad was written to celebrate the occasion, Song of the Mary White.
Solomon Holbourn, Coxswain of the Mary White of Broadstairs had an aunt, Sophia who married at Folkestone in 1813 to William Stevenson. His eldest son William became a mariner and boatman, and married an Elizabeth Wellard in 1839 at St Peters, Broadstairs. One of their children, born in 1848, was named after his father William, but in his adult life was better known as Bill ‘Floaty’ Stevenson, and as such as a member of the Frances Forbes Barton lifeboat crew. The "Frances Forbes Barton" was originally, in 1897, the legacy of a Miss Webster to the boatmen of Broadstairs. It is recorded as having remained at that station until 1912, when it was moved to the Walmer station when the Broadstairs one closed, during which time it had been taken out on 77 launches and saved 115 lives, by far the most effective of the RNLI craft stationed there.
Broadstairs' lifeboats were further supported by a fund established in the 1860s by Sir Charles Reed FSA.
[edit] Twin Cities/Towns
[edit] Gallery
 Broadstairs Seafront |
 Viking Bay, Broadstairs |
 Bleak House (top) |
 Bradstowe Harbour |
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Broadstairs and St. Peters Town Council
- Personal Perspective
- Crampton Tower
- Broadstairs Dickens Festival
[edit] References
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with its suburbs, villages, towns and parishes: |
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Acol • Birchington-on-Sea • Broadstairs • Cliffsend • Cliftonville • Isle of Thanet • Manston • Margate • Minster • Monkton • Newington • Palm Bay • Ramsgate • Sarre • St Nicholas at Wade • St Peter's • Westbrook • Westgate-on-Sea |
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| List of places in Kent | |
