‘Our English watering place’. Kent’s homage to Dickens
Leave London for the coast of Kent and it’s astonishing how quickly time falls away. The rapeseed fields give way to the coastline, misty like a typical English day in any century. Near Herne Bay, the twin towers of the long-defunct, mostly demolished medieval church at Reculver dominate the skyline. This was the site of one of the earliest Roman forts built against Saxon raids.
But much of north and east Kent feels mid-century or the late 20th.
Our fellow traveller, who grew up in Gravesend, a town in northwest Kent, tells us about childhood holidays in Broadstairs. In the days before the takeaway cup, these holidays inevitably involved a 4 pm ritual — the young child bearing a tray of hot tea, loaded with teapot and china cups across the hot sand to her parents. The shop where she bought the refreshments still exists — nothing has changed, our companion said — and so it is with Broadstairs too.
There’s still the little Palace Cinema, which looks like a church and seats roughly 40.
There’s still Bleak House, the renamed pile on a cliff, the house where Charles Dickens holidayed and is said to have written David Copperfield.
The connection with Dickens, who called Broadstairs “ our English watering place “, is a constant. Right down to the humour with a house in the heart of Broadstairs declaring “Charles Dickens never lived here”.
Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com
