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The Flood of '97...
Dave Jordan has very kindly supplied a fascinating old post
card from his collection. It shows Whitstable at the time of
serious sea flood.... but it wasn't the one that many of us
remember from 1953. It was much, much earlier. In fact it was
back in 1897....
I know that readers love to guess locations... and so I
won't spoil it for you. I'll give you a few moments to ponder
problem..... and discuss it all at the foot of the page!!!!
More from Dave's Collection
Dave has also forwarded other post cards. The first shows
Long Beach from Beach Walk....
It is so typical of Whitstable of the past.... with industry
sitting so closely alongside leisure areas. The background is
one of a bustling harbour with the east quay prominent on the
right, the chimney of the old caulking plant just right of
centre and the Seasalter & Han Oyster store between the two.
In the foreground, we have the leisure area of Beach
Walk..... with seats that also served as storage boxes, the
swing boats on the shingle and a row of tea booths fringing Long
Beach in front of the railway sidings of the old Canterbury
& Whitstable railway line.
Where else could this be but Whitstable? The post card will
eventually be a major part of a permanent article on the Beach
Walk locality. As our regular readers will know, we have
discussed this district on several occasions in past Chat
Columns and, between us all, we have now collected a wealth of
material.
And just to remind us of Whitstable's most famous industry,
Dave has added this lovely post card for good measure....
Now Back to the Flood
Photo...
Okay... now for some answers to and discussion of Dave's flood
postcard....
Let's start with the location... and it might help to look at
the photo below. It was taken just a few days ago at.... Tower
Parade....
You can see that the buildings on the extreme
right and extreme left match those in the old postcard. Thus,
Dave's photo appears to have been taken from the current day site of the
Bowling Alley car park.
The comparison reveals something else. All the
properties enclosed by the dotted line below appear to have been
built post-1897....
That will come as no surprise as far as the large
cream building is concerned because that was built just a few
years ago. However, it does surprise me that the buildings just left
of centre were later additions.
If you remove the buildings in the dotted box and
return to 1897, you get a massive gap along Tower Parade. If you
then read Brain Smith's article 'History
of the Whitstable Shoreline from 1287' , you
realise that the gap marked the original course of the Gorrell
Stream before it was truncated and diverted into the old 'backwater' (now known
as the 'Gorrell Tank').
The low lying Tower Parade/Beach Walk area has
been a bit of a flood problem for centuries. As Brian's article
explains, a sea wall was built in 1290 - approximately along the
line of the Long Beach wall of today. However, that wall and some
20 acres of land were abandoned to the sea when a new wall was
built in 1797. The new structure was Jurden's Inset Wall and it
followed the line of the Tower Parade roadway. (Note: This was NOT
the raised pathway... which arrived much later). Of course, the wall
at Long Beach was eventually re-established but, even so, the area
continued to suffer the occasional flood - including those in 1897
and 1953.
Dave's postcard demonstrates that by 1897, the
Beach Walk/Tower Parade area was partly an area for entertainment
with the remains of that large cabin containing the word 'ICES'.
By then, the old Canterbury-Whitstable Railway Line was bringing
day trippers and holiday makers from the city to the railway
station just west of Tower Parade. It is interesting to muse over
the starting point of that cabin. Was it moved a few yards from
Beach Walk.... or was it one of the ramshackle
collection of tea huts that lined Long Beach in Victorian times
and did the force of water relocate it more than a hundred yards
inland?
The foreground of the postcard is interesting as
it shows shingle and grass. I would have expected to see some
cinders and evidence of a railway track. A substantial part of the
land between the harbour and Beach Walk served as a railway
marshalling yard and one of the sidings ran parallel with and
close to the Tower parade roadway. It may be that the railway line
is obscured behind that patch of water.
No doubt, some of that water is floodwater but
there is clear evidence of a permanent ditch. This ties in with a
remark made in the Visitors Book, I think, by Pam Steward who
recalled a dyke close to Tower Parade in the
1950s.
All this leaves one final comment for me to make
before I hand it all over to our readers for discussion. Take a
look at the houses on the right in the current day photo below....
They are set up as shops.... but there are no shop
fronts in the 1897 post card. Somewhere down the line, there was a
change of usage with Tower Parade developing as a small shopping
area. What were those houses at the back end of the 19th century?
Well they may have been residences. On the other hand, they do
have a Victorian guest house look about them. Wisely, the
architect elevated them above the level of the occasional
flood!
On behalf of SW readers, I would to thank Dave for
making all the cards available to us.
Reaction to Dave's Postcards
Messages received on the subject of Dave's
photos appear below...
| Hi Dave,
The railway siding ended where the garage now ends
the photo was probably taken from the top of the wall that
surrounded the siding.
Barry Tilley
Whitstable
Our Response: Thanks, Barry. Seeing
rail trucks in that area of Tower Parade is one of my
earliest childhood memories. I reckon I must have been in
a pram or push chair at the time! PS I
must apologise for attributing your message to 'Stewart
Tilley' (your brother) at the outset. I'll make up for it
later by attributing one of his to you, Barry! ;-) PPS
Thank you to Stewart for pointing out the mistake. |
| I was fascinated to see this postcard - I wouldn't
have recognised my old area.
I have a postcard sent to my late husband Derek by
Tony Blake, showing Tower Parade circa 1910, when the
shops were definitely in situ. I understood that the
original detached houses which are still there, predated
the terraced shop developments. The new building is on the
site of what was a butchers/ grocery shop up to the early
eighties which suffered structural damage when the owners
took down an inner wall or walls - a massive crack
appeared and those living there had to evacuate the
premises. It lay empty for several years, then was
demolished and the site left derelict for more years until
eventually the current flats were built.
I lived at number 9, which was where the Tankerton
Estate Office was situated. I believe this lasted until
the second world war when the shop was closed. Following
that it was a grocers', most notably Rofe's from 1948 to
1978.
My husband opened a religious bookshop, which my son
Robin and I carried on after his death in 1993, closing in
2000 after 20 years trading. Now, like so many others on
Tower Parade it is a shop no more...
Angela Johnson
Whitstable
Our Response: Thanks, Angela. I have taken
another look. It is possible that one or two of the
smaller buildings could be obscured by the flood wreckage
in Dave's postcard (eg the building alongside the steps
leading down to the footpath which served as a newsagents
in the 1950s)..... but I rather doubt it.
There is certainly no evidence of the taller
buildings in the section that I have highlighted with the
red line. In fact, the building on the extreme left of the
postcard has its side wall exposed whereas it later became
part of a terrace. I wonder if anyone has an old map to
confirm that all those buildings arrived after 1897.
Incidentally, Doug West's book, Portrait of a
Seaside Town (p29) suggests that the first of the
Tower Parade properties appeared in 1890. On pages
52-53, Doug has included a photo of the area circa 1893.
At that stage, only four houses were present. These were
the large terraced properties on the right of Dave's
postcard.
Your message suggests that shops (on the right)
arrived between 1897 and 1910. Presumably, this was when
the area started to grow in popularity as a leisure area.
It also coincides with the development of the Tankerton
Estate which would have increased the demand for retail
outlets.
As you point out, the most recent addition (the
cream building in the modern photo) replaced an older
structure that was demolished. I presume that it also
swallowed up a gap. Back in the 1950s, this 'gap' was used
as a chicken run and had WWII tank traps on it. |
| As all good locals should have; the street directories
of the area. These show Tower Parade, set in Tankerton
Road, with 1903 reading...
- No6: Charles Goldfinch a greengrocer.
- No5 Collier and Daniells Fancy goods.
- No4 Thomas Snow - also No 4 G.N.J.Buckstone
draper
- No3 as the Tankerton Estate office
- No2 was Miss K.Prior a confectioner... and
- No1 WAS c.Coleman provision merchant.
Going on to 1918 there is No7 P. Capon china warehouse
down to No 3 J.H. Reeve a dairyman. All the others show no
change from the 1903 entry.
This does not allow for any changes that were not
recorded, as I have caught this out before by finding an
entry of somebody who had died twenty years earlier. It
seems that they just repeated an entry unless they were
told differently.
Congrats on getting SW running so well and so quickly.
Ron Coleman
New Southgate
London
27/7/08
Our Response: Thanks, Ron, My grandfather had
several street inddxe which he used for his tailoring
business in Railway Avenue. However, they were lost after
he died in the 1960s. |
A Final Word
on Old Postcards...
It may seem a bit odd that a flood scene should
turn up on a post card. However, Victorians and Edwardians were
obviously fascinated by disasters. Some time ago, I inherited a
family postcard album containing samples dating between 1898 and
1908. The book includes this scene....
It's the wreck of the Cromer Express in which ten
people died and twenty were seriously injured back in 1905. The
back of the post card looks like this... but note the wording
highlighted in yellow....
If Mrs Drury hadn't arrived home safely and was
tucked up in hospital, I wonder how she would have felt about the
choice of post card! Presumably that's when you hoped that Mrs D
had a solid sense of humour to go with her fractured humerus!
The album contains three different cards
portraying the disaster!. It also contains cards from all over
the UK. Sadly, whilst there are shots of Deal and Ramsgate,
there are none of Whitstable. I daresay there are sites like SW
around the country that would be delighted to take a look at the
album. I really must have a wander around Google!
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