Broadstairs
), 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.
The town lies above a
harbour, historically known for
smuggling. Near
Dover and
Canterbury, and within an hour's drive of the
M25,
London's orbital motorway, it is a popular resort for daytrippers and holidaymakers. It has seven bays of golden sand, including Viking Bay, Louisa 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.
There is a small cinema 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 were both 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.
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, letters to Dickens can 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
By this date steamboats were becoming more common, having begun to take over from the hoys and sailing packets about
1814. As with all 'new-fangled' devices they were accepted readily by some, and despised by others. However they 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 unrivalled speed of the steam packet was outmanoeuvring all other classes of vessel, but it brought a new prosperity to Thanet.
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 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.
Lifeboats arrived in Broadstairs in 1850. 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, was the prompt that led to old Thomas White to present one of his lifeboats to his home town of Broadstairs that summer. A ballad waswritten 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. Braodstairs'lifeboats were further supported by a fund established in the 1860s by
Sir Charles Reed FSA.
The railway arrived later. Although numerous holidaymakerswere attracted to Broadstars and to other Thanet seaside towns during the
Victorian era, it was not served by a raillink 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, theregions 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).
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 and an interesting museum celebrating the town's connection with Charles Dickens.
*
Wattignies,
Franceimage:Bsatirsfront3.jpg|Broadstairs Seafrontimage:Broadstairs_Viking_Bay.jpg|Viking Bay, Broadstairsimage:Bleak-house-broadstairs.jpg|Bleak House (top)image:Broadstairs Harbour.jpg|Bradstowe Harbour*
List of clubs and societies in Thanet*
Broadstairs and St. Peters Town Council*
Personal Perspective*
Crampton Tower*
Broadstairs Dickens Festival
