The Afterlife of Dickens Objects
Our English Watering-Place
Photographs by Jacob Paskins
In 1851, Charles Dickens wrote an essay about his favourite seaside holiday resort, which he affectionately referred to as 'Our English Watering-Place.' Ever since the text was published in Dickens's magazine Household Words, the east-Kent town of Broadstairs has become deeply associated with the novelist, and generations of town councillors have eagerly drawn on the essay for some free municipal promotion. Broadstairs has hosted its annual Dickens Festival each June since 1937 and numerous commercial establishments in the town, including pubs, tea rooms and launderettes, are swathed in references to the resort's most famous holidaymaker.
Dickens penned the article while looking from 'a sunny window on the edge of a chalk-cliff in the old-fashioned watering-place to which we are a faithful resorter.' Dickens began visiting Broadstairs in 1837 and returned frequently until the 1850s. In 1850 he took residence in Fort House, situated on the cliff overlooking the 'fishing boats in the tiny harbour', and it was from the bow window of the first-floor study that Dickens wrote his description of the town.
In 1851, Charles Dickens wrote an essay about his favourite seaside holiday resort, which he affectionately referred to as 'Our English Watering-Place.' Ever since the text was published in Dickens's magazine Household Words, the east-Kent town of Broadstairs has become deeply associated with the novelist, and generations of town councillors have eagerly drawn on the essay for some free municipal promotion. Broadstairs has hosted its annual Dickens Festival each June since 1937 and numerous commercial establishments in the town, including pubs, tea rooms and launderettes, are swathed in references to the resort's most famous holidaymaker.
Dickens penned the article while looking from 'a sunny window on the edge of a chalk-cliff in the old-fashioned watering-place to which we are a faithful resorter.' Dickens began visiting Broadstairs in 1837 and returned frequently until the 1850s. In 1850 he took residence in Fort House, situated on the cliff overlooking the 'fishing boats in the tiny harbour', and it was from the bow window of the first-floor study that Dickens wrote his description of the town.
Bleak House - Broadstairs
Click on image to view video of newsreel 'Bleak House - What the Dickens' (1940) via British Pathé
Fort House itself was eventually renamed Bleak House in honour of its most celebrated tenant (see video above). In the early twentieth century, the building was extended and topped with some ever-so-slightly pompous castellation. While the building has always remained in private hands, it was until recently open to the public who could visit Dickens's study and see his little writing desk. Dickens's association with the house means that each time it is put on the market its sale always provokes a rustle of excitement.
Dickens's House Comes Under The Hammer
Click on image to view video of 'Dickens's House Comes Under The Hammer' (1949) via British Pathé
In 1949, a British Pathé newsreel reported rumours that 'Americans' wanted to purchase the house, dismantle it, ship it off and reconstruct it brick by brick in the United States (see video above). The house did not sell on that occasion and it remained in the hands of the same family for several generations. When the house was sold most recently about ten years ago, the national and local press raised eyebrows at the cool £1 million price tag. The house is no longer open to the public, but remains the most familiar building in the town. Visitors seeking out some of the everyday objects owned by Dickens should head instead to The Dickens House Museum, just a few hundred metres along the promenade. (Check the website for opening times).
While the town is no longer surrounded by 'ripening corn on the cliff' (more like post-war suburban sprawl), Broadstairs seafront still retains some of the character described by Dickens. Visitors from London continue to enjoy the 'pretty little semi-circular sweep of houses tapering off at the end of the wooden pier into a point in the sea.' The 'excellent' Royal Albion hotel described by Dickens is still thriving. Dickens criticised the Assembly Rooms - a seafront venue for balls and concerts - so harshly that an 1864 guidebook notes that the social establishment soon had to change names. Part of the Assembly Rooms building survives and is incorporated into what is now the Charles Dickens public house. The 'queer old wooden pier' remains 'very picturesque.' Boats are still 'hauled up upon it, ropes are coiled all over it; lobster-pots, nets, masts, oars, spars, sail, ballast, and rickety capstans, make a perfect labyrinth of it.' Add Fish & Chips and scavenging seagulls, and Dickens's description holds firm today.
Over a century-and-a-half after Dickens's love letter to the town, Broadstairs is enjoying a revival as the quintessential English seaside resort. Dickens offers an enigmatic description of a day on the beach that could still ring true today to those who flock onto the golden sands as soon as the sun appears:
So many children are brought down to our watering-place […] The sands are the children's great resort. They cluster there, like ants: so busy burying their particular friends, and making castles with infinite labour which the next tide overthrows, that it is curious to consider how their play, to the music of the sea, foreshadows the realities of their after lives. (17).
Jacob Paskins
April 2012
Bibliography
All About Ramsgate and Broadstairs (London: W. Kent, 1864).
Charles Dickens, 'Our English Watering-Place', reproduced in
John Whyman, Broadstairs and St Peter's in Old Photographs (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1990).
Barrie Wootton, Images of Thanet (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 2004).
