Critical Kent: The Topographies Project: Beaches (2015).

Background notes for Explorations of:

From Whitstable into the Thanet Coast.

(Directions and major sites are in red notes follow a route from Whitstable (off map to left) to Pegwell Bay, and then back to Whitstable along the coast through Ramsgate, Broadstairs, North Foreland, Cliftonville, Margate, Birchington. Any comments, corrections, additions, welcome a.b.bottomley@kent.ac.uk. All mistakes and prejudices are mine. Enjoy!)

Whitstable 3

Pegwell Village Bay10

Ramsgate13

Broadstairs15

North Foreland19

Cliftonville20

Margate23

Birchington24

Some introductory comments:

This route takes us from the North Kent coast (and Whitstable) and onto the Isle of Thanet a large open space of fields and small villages, surrounded by sea on three sides and ringed with coastal towns. It has some beautiful (often sandy) beaches some the central focus of a resort, others still quite wild and seemingly remote. It is also characterised by chalk cliffs: not as high and quite as white as on the south coast, these are rather grey/white, crumbly and clunch like; and for much of the coast line finding or making interconnecting routes between cliff top and beach has been a central characteristic of the area (hence the constant references in place names to gate and stairs). The softness of the chalk has meant that the coast is not only subject to erosion; it has also honeycombed with tunnelling (much of it man-made or enhanced.)

The other significant geographical feature is the strategic position of Thanet at the eastern tip of England, reaching out towards the Continent, as well as marking the beginning of the wider Thames estuary. Now, looking out to sea, there are few ships visible, of any size, whereas once this would have been a major shipping route along the coast, up into the Medway and Thames, and across to Europe. Fishing boats, barges carrying heavy goods, steamers carrying passengers as well as cargo. Wealthy Londoners in the 18th and 19th centuries, could come down to the coast by sea to then sail their yachts out of, for instance, Ramsgate. Then from the 1840s, the advent of the railway line from London into Thanet opened another route into the area and the potential of mass tourism the groundwork having already been laid in the development of towns like Margate as health resorts (bathing in sea water, but not necessarily the sea, and a great deal of fresh, ozone heavy, air).

The architecture of the coastal towns evidences the layers of each historical era from small coastal ports, little more than fishing villages, through to the 1830s and the villas built by and for the first wave of respectable seasonal visitors; then from the 1850-70s the speculative building of estates laid out with grandiose terraces and crescents, parks and promenades. And by then, thanks in part to such developments as the invention of the bathing machine in Margate, the beach and sea had become more than merely a setting, a view from the cliff-top, developing into a place of engagement - with nature, with pleasure, and with company. As the 20th century brought more affluence and leisure to more people (or at least the aspiration to both), Margate, in particular, moved from still genteel (if rather fading) respectability up to the 1930s, to post-war mass tourism Kiss me Quick in Dreamland. So close to London, by train, coach or car - day trippers found Thanet just the right distance for a short jaunt away. With enough savings, they could purchase a caravan on one of the many new caravan sites, the larger run rather like holiday camps, or buy a plot of land to build on, perhaps retire to. However, by the time the infamous Jolly Boys Outing was screened in 1989 (an Only Fools and Horses special), the tide was, already, beginning to turn as new destinations and attractions became accessible and Thanet, along with much of the rest of the coastal resorts of England, went into what seemed to be terminal decline. In soci-economic terms, Thanet now includes some of the most deprived areas in England. Attempts to find and try ways to re-generate the economy, including the use of European money, have not been very successful and the politics of the area are such that at the last election UKIP took control of the local authority. And yet

In small but significant ways, Thanet is now becoming the target of gentrification. Rediscovering the glorious beaches, and the renovation of what remains of some good or pleasingly eccentric architecture, has become rather fashionable for some, described by locals as, down from London. A renaissance in food and hospitality is underway for those whose taste, income, and habits incline them towards the enjoyment of good food and the pleasures of good hotels. The extent to which this creep of gentrification can regenerate a local economy (and for whom), is moot especially given the extensive depravation in the area, as well as a strong sense from some locals that those (recently) down from London are a rather irrelevant minority. There is at present in Thanet quite a clash of cultures: or perhaps just a series of parallels.

Throughout this history, what continues to remain is the potential of the beaches and the sea: but, as is the case so often, it is frequently contested: not least in Whitstable, which is a reminder of the beach as working beach, not merely as one of pleasure -

Whitstable:

Still from a scene shot on Whitstable beach for David Copperfield (1913).

Whitstable is not Thanet it is on the much lower, marshy, coastline where the Swale and Medway form an inlet from the wider Thames estuary. Stand on the beach and to the left is the Isle of Sheppey, and, if the weather is clear, you can see the outline of Essex, on the other side of the Thames, in front of you.

Whitstables origins are tied up with oyster fishing, which (with other shell fishing) provided the main income for the town until into the early 20thC. So important was the trade that a dedicated railway (The Crab and Winkle) was built in 1830 to carry the catch from Whitstable to Canterbury (see crabandwinkle.org). Imagine a small village clustered around the beach and a small port, with a ring of services (church, school etc) around it. The community was structured around not only the activity of fishing, but the mode through which it was organised and controlled:

From All the Year Round November 1859 (author Charles Dickens?):

The Happy Fishing Ground.

There has always been a charm for me about the fisherman's trade.. nothing but the grey sky, or the blood-red sunset, is over my head. I see the dwarfed fishing village across the waves; the cobwebbed lane of drying nets that winds down to the sands; and the sodden lobster-catches struggling between the sunken rocks.

With such day-dream visions as these,..it is not to be wondered at that I have a passion, in all weathers, for dropping quietly down to the coast, and burying myself, for a time, in one of those hilly nooks, where none but boatmen and fishermen can be born, can live, and can die. The places that I love most are those where the "season visitor" is almost, if not totally, unknown; where bathing-machines have never yet penetrated; where the stranger is truly a being of another world; and where the inhabitants believe, with a proud and simple faith, in the unequalled beauty and importance of their little scaly town. Many such places as these do I know, even within fifty miles of the Royal Exchange; and Whitstable, in Kent, the port of Canterbury, on the estuary of the Thames, is one of my especial favourites...

`Its one idea is oysters. It is a town that may be called small, that may be considered well-to-do, that is thoroughly independent, and that dabbles a little in colas, because it has got a small muddy harbour and a single line of railway through the woods to Canterbury, but its best thoughts are devoted to oysters. Its aspect is not sightly, for the line of its flat coast is occupied by squat wooden houses, made soot-black with pitch, the dwellers in which are sturdy freeholders, incorporated free-fishers, or oyster-dredgers, joined together by the ties of a common birthplace, by blood, by marriage, capital, and trade. It has always been their pride, from time out of mind, to live in these dwarfed huts on this stony beach, watching the happy fishing grounds that lie under the brackish water in the bay, where millions of oysters are always breeding with marvellous fertility, and all for the incorporated company's good. How can the free-dredgers, and the whole town of Whitstable, help thinking of oysters, when so many oysters seem to be always thinking of them?

A primitive and curious joint-stock company it is, a joint-stock company whose shares are unknown upon the Stock Exchange, because they are never in any market except Billingsgate market; a joint-stock company that may not be peculiar to Whitstable, but is peculiar, so it seems, to all happy fishing grounds, where oysters are cultivated...

It came together in the dim old times, as a family compact, and a family compact it still remains. Its three hundred and forty odd members are all Whitstable men, or Whitstable widows and children. The stranger is never admitted to the rights and profits of a dredging-freeman, though the strange woman may be brought in by marriage, into the oyster tents, and may rear up sons who shall go forth and fish.

The male infant is born, a young shareholder, in one of the low pitch-black wooden houses on the beach; he is nursed to the tune of an oyster-dredging lullaby, to the howling of the wind, to the hissing of the