KINGSGATE--THE NORTH FORELAND--BROADSTAIRS--ST. PETER’S
The plebeian jollity of the older part of Margate, by the Harbour and
the Jetty, the Fort and the Paragon, gives place westward to modern and
more select Cliftonville.
The walk past Cliftonville the select, along the grassy cliffs, leads
round by Foreness Point and discloses a succession of chalky nooks,
“gaps,” and “gates,” where little ravines run down to the sea: every
one of them pretty well peopled in the summer season. If you want a
cloistered holiday, you will not be well advised to repair to the
Kentish coast for it. Frankly, such a thing is not to be obtained here.
But, at any rate, thus tracing the “ocean’s melancholy marge,” you do
at least escape the electric tramways which cut across Thanet inland
and help to vulgarise this historic isle.
A pretty inlet, called “Botany Bay,” leads to Kingsgate, and is a
spot sufficiently desirable, except for the scattering of new villas
there and the notice-boards of the Kingsgate Residents’ Association,
prescribing what things the wayfarer may not do. These appear to be so
numerous that it would seem to be almost better (as it would indeed be
shorter) to specify the few things that are still allowed.
[Illustration: KINGSGATE]
Kingsgate was known as “Bartholomew’s Gate” until 1683, when Charles
the Second landed here. It is naturally picturesque, and is rendered
more so by the pretentious “castle” on the headland, with the North
Foreland lighthouse peering across the intervening neck. The castle, of
black flint, was built in the eighteenth century by Lord Holland, who,
in common with other wealthy people of what was then regarded as “good
taste,” patronised the romantic Gothic spirit and built himself not
only a make-believe castle but a sham convent as well. The poet Gray,
he of the “Elegy,” disclosed himself as a bitter satirist, not only of
Lord Holland’s castellated residence, but also of Thanet:
“Here reign the blustering North and blighting East;
No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing;
Yet nature could not furnish out the feast,
But he invokes new terrors still to bring.
“Now mouldering fanes and battlements arise,
Turrets and arches nodding to their fall;
Unpeopled monasteries delude our eyes,
And mimic desolation covers all.”
Passing the flint-faced “Captain Digby” inn, famed in the story of
the _Northern Belle_ shipwreck of January 1857, we come to the North
Foreland, “the most easterly projection of Kent,” the cape mentioned
by Ptolemy, about A.D. 150, as Κάντιον ἀκρον, or “Acantium
Promontory.”
The North Foreland light, once occupying a solitary situation on
the cliff-top, is now becoming the centre of a number of villas,
whose windows at night form lower and of course much more feeble
illuminations. But the sea is here spangled with as many lights as
the land, for off the shore are those dangerous shoals, the famous
Goodwin Sands. Dickens, many years ago, in the course of a sketch
of Broadstairs, wrote a good description of them and of the North
Foreland light, mentioning “the Goodwin Sands, whence floating lights
perpetually wink after dark, as if they were carrying on intrigues
with the servants. Also there is a big lighthouse called the North
Foreland, on a hill behind the village, a severe parsonic light, which
reproves the young and giddy floaters, and stares grimly out upon the
sea.”
[Illustration: THE NORTH FORELAND LIGHTHOUSE.
_After W. Daniell, R.A._
]
But since 1880, when the lighthouse was altered, the light has suffered
a complete change, and is not now the steady-going gleam it used to
be. It occults every half-minute, displaying a white and red light
for twenty-five seconds, followed by an eclipse of five seconds. The
effect, compared with the light that Dickens described, is something
like that which would astonish the beholder if a Bishop were to wear a
red tie, or take to drink.
The first lighthouse on the North Foreland was a wooden building,
erected by Sir John Meldrum in 1636. This was destroyed by fire half
a century later. A temporary beacon replaced it, and this in turn
was succeeded by a flint octagonal tower, bearing an open brazier of
coals. This was afterwards enclosed behind glass, and the coals were
kept aflame throughout the night by the lightkeeper constantly playing
on them with a bellows! Those certainly were the heroic times of
lighthouse tending.
The licensee of the first lighthouse was given the right of levying a
toll of one penny per ton on all British ships, and twopence per ton on
all foreign vessels passing the Foreland, he paying the Crown an annual
rent of £20 for fifty years. This grant was renewed to various other
persons for other terms of fifty years. The last of these licensees
bequeathed the unexpired years of his term to Greenwich Hospital, to
which a renewal was granted for ninety-nine years. At the end of that
period, the lighthouse was, rather belatedly, taken over by the Trinity
House, whose Elder Brethren then paid the Commissioners of Greenwich
Hospital about £8,000, by way of compensation.
And thus we come to dear, delightful Broadstairs, which, like every
Thanet coast-town or village, is set down in a gap, or “gate,” of the
cliffs, by which, as by a staircase, you land and ascend from the sea.
Here the gap is a bay, rather larger than most, hence the adjective,
“Broad.” It was anciently “Broadstowe,” but why never “Bradgate” or
“Broadgate” I cannot imagine. At any rate, it matters little. The
point is that here is Broadstairs, very much the same place as that
Dickens knew and loved. Let an anathema be here pronounced against
that man who shall ever contemplate remodelling this cheery little
holiday-place--the delight of children, I was about to say--really
the delight of all who know it! And I think that anathema should be
made retrospective and launched against whoever they were who built the
great ugly barrack hotel on the south cliff. The striking alteration
that has been effected in the remodelling of the so-called “Bleak
House” may, however, be welcomed, in spite of the change thus made in
the appearance it wore in the time of Dickens. “Fort House,” which is
its proper name, was really so ugly that everyone who is not a Dickens
fanatic must rejoice at the blest change.
Dickens first made the acquaintance of Broadstairs in 1837, and he
did not finally desert it as a holiday resort until 1859. Enthusiasts
for whom no detail of Dickens’s life is too small or insignificant
have discovered that his first lodgings were in High Street, at the
house now numbered “31.” It has been entirely rebuilt, but their
enthusiasm is of a dreadnought quality superior to such accidents, and
they flock to see the place because the conclusion of “Pickwick” was
written there: in the house that no longer exists. One would think some
peculiar virtue lingered in the air. Lawn House, and Number 40, Albion
Street, now incorporated with the “Albion Hotel,” were favoured by him
before he took Fort House, in 1850. There he wrote a portion of “David
Copperfield,” but positively not a line of “Bleak House”; and that
name, given later and still surviving, is a quite unwarranted title,
unless indeed it may be taken as descriptive of its undoubtedly bleak
and exposed situation.
Dickens, in 1843, described Broadstairs as “a little fishing place;
intensely quiet”; but presently the growing popularity of it began to
qualify his pleasure. In 1847 he wrote: “Vagrant music is getting to
that height here, and is so impossible to be escaped from, that I fear
Broadstairs and I must part company in time to come. Unless it pours
of rain, I cannot write half an hour without the most excruciating
organs, fiddles, bells, or glee-singers. There is a violin of the most
torturing kind under the window now (time, ten in the morning) and an
Italian box of music on the steps, both in full blast.” And so after
1859 place knew Dickens no more.
“Broadstairs,” says a booklet issued in recent years, setting forth
the desirability of the building-land round about it, “has been vastly
altered and improved since Dickens’s time. Mansions and villas have
sprung up in all directions, public thoroughfares have improved, or
been newly constructed, promenades have been formed along the sea
front, commanding extensive prospects of land and marine scenery,
charming gardens have been laid out.”
This is a builder’s, an auctioneer’s, and land-agent’s idea of a vastly
improved place; but, although Broadstairs is still delightful, I do not
think any one else will be found to agree with the ideas put forward
by these interested persons. Most people would prefer the comparative
seclusion of forty years earlier. But you are not to suppose it to have
been altered to any appreciable degree. The surroundings have been
vastly changed, but the little bay with the queer old jetty is the
same, although something, I know not what, has recently been done to
the jetty, something in which plenteous tar is concerned.
[Illustration: BROADSTAIRS: YORK GATE]
You go down to the harbour past the Droit Office and through the old
archway called “York Gate,” built, according to the inscription upon
it, by George Culmer in 1540, and repaired by Sir George Henniker in
1795. This gateway, it is rather surprising to learn, was built as a
defence against the foreign foe. It may, when fitted with its wooden
door, “slammed, barred, and bolted,” have detained an enemy for a brief
space, but it can never have been a formidable obstacle. The suggestion
may be ventured that it was designed to detain the fierce foeman only
until the feeble folk of Broadstairs of old could snatch up a few
belongings and hurry away. The flimsy old stone and black-flint archway
is liberally cobbled with brick, and valerian and grasses grow on its
mouldering walls.
Down along the jetty Broadstairs looks its best. Here is the “Tartar
Frigate” inn, flint-faced, and here, too, the lifeboat-house, with
the _Mary Barton_ lifeboat, presented in 1897, whose chief exploit
was the saving of ninety-three lives on July 14th, 1911. So, you see,
Broadstairs knows something else beside holiday sunshine and calm days.
The old figurehead of a Highlander here, built on to the side of a
sail-loft, hints as much. From what far-away shipwreck it derived is
forgotten; and the Highlander, although still looking out with mien so
dauntless, is now a much-scarred and battered veteran. He once, you
notice, drew a sword, but his right hand and sword are gone.
Broadstairs is extraordinarily self-contained, tightly packed,
cheerful, and bustling, but there are quiet nooks in it; appropriately
named, too. “Serene Place” is one of them. The electric tramways which
now quarter so much of Thanet do not trouble the little town, but
pass by some distance at the back, up along the wilderness tableland
of “Dumpton Park Drive,” and a kind of God-forsaken No Man’s Land,
horribly dreary and depressing, which stretches between Broadstairs and
Ramsgate.
[Illustration: BROADSTAIRS.]
St. Peter’s, the village where the mother-church of Broadstairs is
situated, is a mile and a quarter in the hinterland, with tramcars
whirling all round it.
“In the pretty rural churchyard of St. Peter’s,” I read, “is a
headstone to mark the last resting-place of Richard Joy, the ‘Kentish
Samson.’”
Now the churchyard of St. Peter’s, pretty though it may be, is so
little rural that houses numerously and intimately look upon it;
and the pathway through the very forest of tombstones it contains
is asphalted and strictly railed in. Fortunately, however, for
those interested in this mortuary way, Richard Joy’s tombstone
adjoins the path, and his epitaph, surmounted by representations of
thoughtful-looking cherubs and a couple of trumpets, is distinctly to
be read from it.
Thus you may read:
In Memory of MR. RICHARD JOY
(call’d the Kentish Samson) who
Died May 18th 1742, Aged 67
“_Herculean Hero! Fam’d for Strength
At last Lies here his Breadth & Length._
“_See How the Mighty Man is Fall’n!
To Death y^e Strong & Weak are all one._
“_And the Same Judgment doth Befall
Goliath Great, as David Small._”
Joy, who performed many extraordinary feats of strength, including the
pulling against a powerful horse, the lifting of a weight of 2,240
lbs., and the snapping of a rope that had resisted a breaking strain
of 35 cwts., was one of the smuggling fraternity, and met his death by
drowning when engaged in one of those contraband exploits. His sister
was almost as strong as himself, and performed many remarkable feats of
strength.
This is an authentic memorial, but those irresponsible books, the
various Collections of Epitaphs, tell us of the following choice
specimen to be found here:
“Against his will,
Here lies George Hill,
Who from a cliff
Fell down quite stiff.
When it happened is not known
Therefore not mentioned on this stone.”
It is quite easy to “collect” epitaphs on the terms of inventing
them; and this, as might well be supposed, is a pure effort of the
imagination.