The Fight For The Soul Of Spitalfields
UPDATE: The Truman Brewery’s planning application was approved by Tower Hamlets Development Committeee with councillors Kevin Brady and Kahar Chowdhury voting in favour and Abdul Mukit against.
The bellman led the way as the campaign to SAVE BRICK LANE reached its climax on Sunday when protestors staged a mock funeral procession with speeches outside the Truman Brewery.
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie was there to capture the drama of the occasion.
Tonight, Tuesday 14th September, Tower Hamlets Council’s Development Committee makes its decision upon the Truman Brewery’s controversial planning application for a shopping mall with four floors of offices on top, as the first step in the redevelopment of the entire brewery site into a corporate plaza.
Click here to watch the committee meeting live at 6:30pm
Local councillor Shad Chowdhury speaks for the community against the Truman Brewery development
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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Hounds Of Hackney Downs
In strict alphabetical order, here are the latest heroic hounds to achieve canine immortality in the ever-growing gallery created by Hackney Mosaic Project under the inspired direction of Tessa Hunkin on Hackney Downs.
THE HACKNEY MOSAIC PROJECT is seeking commissions, so if you would like a mosaic please get in touch hackneymosaic@gmail.com
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A Walk On The White Cliffs
This is the last day of the Gentle Author’s holiday, so you only have until midnight to take advantage of our HARVEST SALE, selling all our books at half price. Simply add code ‘HARVEST’ at checkout to claim your discount.
CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE SPITALFIELDS LIFE BOOKSHOP
The White Cliffs are a popular source of inspiration for artists
In common with thousands of other travellers, the point of departure for my journey was Dover yet, unlike everyone else, I turned left at the ferry terminal to follow the coastal path eastward towards Deal.
Before I even began the climb uphill to the cliffs, I was confronted with a poignant reminder of the strategic importance of this small town situated at the narrowest point of the English Channel. A statue was being unveiled commemorating the seamen of the Merchant Navy who lost their lives in the Second World War, a third of whom never returned. Just a few frail veterans with medals gathered in sadness, as sailors lined up with flags and local dignitaries made speeches, while a vintage airplane puttered overheard in gathering clouds.
As the ceremony concluded and umbrellas unfurled, I walked on past narrow terraces tucked in at the foot of the tall cliffs towering aloft. The epic spectacle of the ferry port only becomes apparent as you ascend the narrow path crossing beneath the motorway suspended above, feeding the terminal with a ceaseless flow of traffic.
At this point, it seemed that my excursion might be over when a thunderstorm broke over my head, sending arrows of forked lightening into the sea. Impatient with standing under the concrete bridge waiting for the rain to stop, I set out again and was forced to take shelter again in a thicket, contemplating an abandoned shopping trolley and an old lawnmower. Once the storm relented, I struggled uphill to the cafeteria for visitors to the White Cliffs Experience, joining the melancholy throng eating all-day breakfasts and gazing jealously across the channel at the sunlit French coast.
How grateful I was when the rain stopped and I set out in earnest through the puddles and muddy paths. After a mile or so, I left the visitors behind and the grassy footpath became less worn, bordered with wild thyme and fennel. The undulating nature of the cliff exposed impressive deep chasms faced with sheer walls of chalk descending hundred of feet to the water below, inducing a sense of giddy exhilaration tinged with vertigo. The dark clouds were behind me and a warm wind was in my face, and the French coast gleamed in the sunlight twenty-three miles across the sparkling sea. When I descended to the bay at St Margaret’s At Cliffe, barely a soul disturbed the peace underscored by the gentle rise and fall of the waves.
Autumn declared itself in the red hips, hawthorn and sloe berries along the path and in the sight of a tractor ploughing up the stubble, trailed by a flock of seagulls. Yet, after the squall, the weather was benign, the walking was good and within a few hours the cliffs declined, delivering me to the long shingle beach at Kingsdown. On the last stretch, a hawk hovered overhead, drifting and swooping on the currents of warm air before folding his wings and dropping like a dart towards his prey.
For places so close to London, both Kingsdown and Walmer were unexpectedly quiet and unspoilt seaside towns. A magnificent long line of Edwardian villas borders the beach, which has a sparse forest of dwarf evergreen oaks shielding the land from the sea. This was where Julius Caesar landed two thousand years ago and it is not difficult to imagine the Roman galleys pulled onto the beach here. Castles at Walmer and Deal, and eighteenth century barracks in Deal, serve as a reminder of the threat of invasion that persisted into the last century. At Walmer, a handsome stone gothic boathouse on the seafront reveals the importance of the lifeboat to these small communities that relied upon the sea for their livelihood. Today just a handful of fishing boats remain, surrounded by their paraphernalia of plastic fish trays, lobster pots and nets.
A portion of cod and chips provided necessary sustenance to make it along this seemingly-endless seafront to Deal, where a cup of tea outside the ramshackle shed known as the Sea Cafe offered welcome refreshment upon arrival. The last of the afternoon sun was fading and the shops had all shut, which meant that an exploration of the manifold delights of Deal would have to wait for another day.
Twenty Years Ago Today
Twenty years ago this morning, I woke in an apartment in New York City. It was around eight thirty when my friend called from outside the bank in Midtown, where he had gone to deposit cheques. He had left early to be there at opening time and, as he was standing in line waiting for a teller, he saw on the television that there was a fire in one of the towers at the World Trade Centre.
I got out of bed and climbed up onto the flat roof of the apartment. It was a beautiful day, clear and bright with a blue sky after days of rain and cloud, and the humidity which overwhelms Manhattan in July and August had cleared. Although most people try to avoid New York in the summer, and residents who have the option seek refuge in beach houses, it is my favourite time of year in the city. The one time when the pace slows, languor prevails, and there is peace in the shadowy air-conditioned buildings where people linger to avoid the baking temperature and blinding light outside in the streets.
Summer was drawing to an end and there would be no more of the trips to Long Island that had punctuated my time in the City. Just a week earlier, on Labor Day, which marks the change in the season, the beaches had closed for the year.
I stood on this same roof on July 4th and watched the fleet line up in the East River, admiring the firework display as I ate dinner with friends. Looking across Manhattan that morning, I could see the distant plume of smoke from the westerly of the towers. It did not mean anything to me then, but I was puzzled how it could have happened, so I went downstairs and switched on the television. The television was reporting a plane had crashed into the tower. It was an extraordinary event for which the news anchor had no explanation, and so I went back to bed and dozed again.
I was awoken by the return of my friend who had cycled back from his errand at the bank. People were getting really excited about this fire, he told me, and he switched on the television again. For the first time, I sensed the panic and helplessness which was to envelop the city that day, as the presenters struggled to find words and keep their cool in the face of inexplicable and unprecedented events.
Then came the strangest moment of television I ever saw. Upon the screen, a plane jetted out of nowhere and disappeared into one the towers. “That’s a re-run, you’re seeing here, of the plane hitting the tower that we reported earlier,” commented the news-anchor, only to swallow her words – almost choking – as she exclaimed, “Oh no! That’s not a re-run, that’s another plane.”
Exactly a week earlier, at eight thirty in the morning, I visited the World Trade Centre accompanying my friend who was applying to an office there for a street traders’ licence. We came through the subway which opened up into a shopping mall and emerged onto the plaza directly beneath the towers. I recalled the first time I came to New York and stood at the top. Stretching my arms between those external struts and gazing down upon Manhattan from such a height, it was as if looking from the window of an aeroplane. My birthday was in a few days and we vowed to return to the top for a celebration, but we did not go back.
Once the second plane hit the towers, the tenor of events changed. Very quickly, reports came in of hijackings and other planes unaccounted for. I went back up onto the roof of the apartment and looked again to confirm the reality of the television news with my own eyes. Now there were two plumes of smoke in the sky, and sirens erupted through the streets as fire crews and police hurtled down the avenues of Manhattan. I returned to the television and stayed there, compelled. I had a pocket email machine and I was able to write messages to everyone in London to let them know I was alright, before the lines went dead.
A campaign was underway, something I could only comprehend through reference to science fiction such as “The War of the Worlds.” An attack had commenced that morning without indication how long it would last. As I sat there in shock at the accumulating reports of the plane hitting the Pentagon and the crash of United 93, a dread grew inside me. There was no reason to assume that this would not continue all day and it was impossible to know where and when it would end. It felt like the end of the world – there was no way to grasp the nature of what was happening. When I returned to the roof and looked again, the World Trade Centre had gone completely, replaced by a vast black tower of smoke billowing into the blue.
Twenty-one months earlier, I had been in Los Angeles at the time of the Millennium. Somehow, everybody expected a transformation and a new era to begin then. Nobody wanted to admit it was a non-event. But that morning, I realised that I was witnessing the actual moment when one century ended and a different world was born.
For a couple of years, I had been working with producers in Times Sq who were to present a play of mine on Broadway, opening on September 15th 2001. I loved being in New York in those days, it was a true metropolis of glamour and affluence – a world incarnated in the now over-familiar fiction of “Sex & the City.” Many times I enjoyed Cosmopolitans at the Bowery Bar, the location where Candice Bushnell’s novel, which was the origin of that series, began.
Walking out onto the street on that September day, several miles from the unfolding catastrophe at the World Trade Centre, the scene was not dissimilar from usual, except – as people went about their business – I knew what everyone was thinking. We were all looking at each other in fear and knowing that we could only enact the semblance of routine. I went to the grocery story and bought food for the next few days. On my way back to the apartment, I saw a postcard of the World Trade Centre on a rack and, without thinking, I took the entire stack in hand, went into the store and paid for them.
Back at the apartment, I addressed postcards to everybody in my address book in England and then I went to the Post Office and mailed them all. I still do not understand why I did this, because I never wrote any messages on the cards, yet I knew everyone would realise who sent them and why. In fact, half arrived within ten days and half arrived four months later, intercepted perhaps as suspicious material in the collective paranoia that ensued.
On the day J.F.Kennedy Airport reopened, I flew back to London, peering from the window of the jet at the smoke still rising from the foot of Manhattan. At once, I went to see my parents in Devon and found them well, but within a week my father died unexpectedly. My mother had dementia and could no longer live alone, so I chose to move back into the family house to care for her. My play never opened on Broadway and I did not have the American career that I so longed for at that time, but after the events I had witnessed it no longer mattered to me.
Save Brick Lane!
Photo © David Hoffman
Despite 7,476 objections and only 82 letters of support, next Tuesday 14th September, Tower Hamlets Council’s Development Committee appears set upon approving the Truman Brewery’s application for an ugly shopping mall with four floors of offices on top, as the first step in the redevelopment of the entire former brewery site into a corporate plaza.
Back in the spring, the committee deferred the decision when concerns were raised about the damage the development would do to Brick Lane, pushing up rents which in turn will drive out the small independent shops and curry restaurants that characterise Spitalfields. Speaking with admirable social conscience, Councillor Sufia Alam expressed disappointment at the lack of housing in the development when there is a such a chronic shortage locally.
Chairman of the committee Councillor Abdul Mukit recognised the disastrous impact that the proposed brewery development would have upon the Bangladeshi community in particular and was unconvinced by the paltry ‘social benefits’ offered. ‘It’s not enough!’ he declared repeatedly at the meeting with Dickensian eloquence.
So now the Truman Brewery have come back with an enhanced offer to the community and it is still pitiful. In the new development, so-called ‘affordable workspace’ discount is increased from 10% of space at 30% market rent to 10% of space at 45% market rent, but still far above current rents locally. No discount at all is being offered on shops in the mall. The developer’s estimate of £6 per day spent locally on lunch by construction workers is increased to £15 per day when the office workers move in and, no doubt, the usual takeaway food chains open.
If it was not enough before, no-one could reasonably claim it is enough now. But the likely approval of the Truman Brewery shopping mall would unfortunately be true to form for Tower Hamlets Council who are responsible for a line of recent bad decisions including approving the conversion of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry into a boutique hotel, the digging up of the five-hundred-year-old Bethnal Green Mulberry Tree (now quashed) and the disastrous Liveable Streets programme which would see the obliteration of the historic streetscape at Arnold Circus.
I have grow increasingly disillusioned by the leaders of Tower Hamlets Council under Mayor John Biggs who call themselves ‘Labour’ yet pursue neo-liberal policies of furthering developers’ interests at any cost, destroying old buildings and encouraging social cleansing of neighbourhoods, in callous disregard of community and cultural heritage.
The council has been spinning the line that they ‘have no choice’ but to approve the Truman Brewery development since the developer could win on appeal. Yet they have rejected two nearby applications recently by Second Home and Banglatown Supermarket on the basis of harm to the Brick Lane Conservation Area.
To approve the Truman Brewery development would be an abnegation of the council’s responsibility and a betrayal of their constituents, advocating the interests of big money over the needs of residents when there are solid and defensible legal reasons in planning law for rejection. The councillors need to be mindful of the local elections next spring and the widespread disenchantment with their policies across the borough.
By contrast, we are delighted that Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green & Bow, has declared her support for a community-led master plan for the whole brewery site which could set parameters for future development, ensuring local needs are not ignored.
Planning expert Alec Forshaw of the Spitalfields Trust has prepared a list of reasons why the committee should reject the current Truman Brewery application which you can read below. We hope the councillors will do the right thing next Tuesday and vote in the interests of those who elected them rather than submit to any sinister ‘party line’ which supports development uncritically.
Join the protest march this Sunday 12th September, meeting at Altab Ali Park at 11:30am.
The Battle for Brick Lane exhibition I curated for Spitalfields Trust is open this Saturday and Sunday at 25 Princelet St from noon until 6pm.
A big block on Brick Lane
Shopping mall
Corporate plaza
REASONS WHY THE TRUMAN BREWERY SHOPPING MALL MUST BE REFUSED
The proposed Truman Brewery development of a shopping mall with four floors of corporate offices on top will push up rents and drive out the small independent shops and restaurants which define Brick Lane. Also it will overshadow the low-rise nineteenth century terrace in Woodseer Street and its generic architecture will damage the Brick Lane Conservation Area.
A radical rethink is needed to assess what the entire site of the former Truman Brewery could offer to sustain and strengthen the community in Spitalfields.
There are sound reasons to reject the current proposal, which can be successfully defended at appeal without expensive legal representation, and Tower Hamlets Development Committee must refuse the application on these grounds.
1. HARM TO BRICK LANE
Tower Hamlets Council’s Local Plan requires a mix of uses to revitalise the ‘Brick Lane Town Centre’ and reinforce its character of small independent shops and businesses alongside residential streets (TH Local Plan page 205).
The inclusion of large floor-plate offices in the Truman Brewery development will be harmful to ‘Brick Lane Town Centre.’ Whitechapel and Aldgate Town Centres ARE identified for office growth, but Tower Hamlets’ Local Plan does NOT promote offices in Brick Lane.
Planning policies for the City Fringe require a balance between residential and commercial development. National Planning Policy Framework paragraph 85 states that residential development plays a key role in sustaining town centres – a factor that is even more significant post-Covid.
Despite requests from the community, no Planning Brief or Master Plan exists for the Truman Brewery, a large site which is ideal for a mix of residential and commerce. Yet, if the rest of the brewery is redeveloped as a corporate plaza in line with the current application, there will be no residential.
The proposed commercial development site on Woodseer St would be a natural location for residential development. Currently a car park, it was previously housing and never part of the brewery operations.
2. LACK OF AFFORDABLE WORK SPACE
Construction costs for the new building will be high because of the developer’s requirement of Grade A offices, high-end shops and a two storey basement. Consequently, rents will be expensive. Even with the suggested discounts, the offices will be unaffordable to local businesses and no reduction at all is being offered on shops.
3. HARM TO THE CONSERVATION AREA
Tower Hamlets’ Local Plan seeks to protect the historic character of Brick Lane, but – in considering the Truman Brewery shopping mall – the planning officer’s report ignores this.
The proposed design or the shopping mall is stridently unsympathetic and grossly out of scale. The corner of Brick Lane and Woodseer St will be twice the height of the corner building opposite, harming the setting of the fine Edwardian terrace at 124-138 Brick Lane.
Nowhere does the planning officer’s report acknowledge that Woodseer St contributes positively to the Conservation Area, even though Tower Hamlets Council’s own Conservation Area Appraisal confirms that it does. Like other streets off Brick Lane, Woodseer St is a quiet residential backwater. Busy shops and restaurants will harm its character.
Planning policies aim to protect Spitalfields’ intimate street pattern, including the narrow width of Woodseer St. So the widening of Woodseer St, as proposed in the Truman Brewery scheme, is not a positive response to preserving the existing local context.
The Truman Brewery’s chimney is identified by Tower Hamlets Council as an important landmark and views of it must be protected. The best view of the chimney in Brick Lane is south of Woodseer St. This is the only view of the chimney when approaching from the south and it will be cut in half by the height of the new shopping mall.
4. NOISE, OVERLOOKING & LOSS OF DAYLIGHT FOR RESIDENTS
New shops and a new entry into the brewery on Woodseer St with increase foot-fall and deliveries. The proposed restaurant with external seating at the rear will cause disturbance to residents in Woodseer St. Previously, Tower Hamlets Council refused restaurant use at this location.
While some loss of daylight for residents on the south side of Woodseer St is inevitable if any building takes place on the north side, the proposed scale of the new shopping mall and offices, including the set-back top floors, results in excessive loss.
Tower Hamlets’ Local Plan ‘Vision for the City Fringe’ states “By 2031 the City Fringe will become a more attractive place to live, work and visit.” This scheme will not make Woodseer St a better place to live.
5. SUSTAINABILITY
The report does not mention the environmental implications of digging a double storey basement, requiring the removal of around 50,000 cubic metres of spoil by an enormous number of heavy lorries driving through residential streets. No strategy has been set out for this or any analysis of the implications.
The planning officer’s report does not mention the trees on the site, which include the semi-mature False Acacia that attractively overhangs the street and the six young replacements which the Council made the owner plant after he had damaged the previous trees. Any new trees planted on the north pavement will struggle with a water-table drastically lowered by the proposed adjacent basements.
6. THIS PROPOSAL IS PREMATURE WITHOUT A MASTER PLAN FOR THE ENTIRE TRUMAN BREWERY SITE
The location of the application is a part of the huge complex of buildings and empty spaces, straddling both sides of Brick Lane, which comprise the former Truman Brewery. There are many opportunities for new development, creating new public spaces and pedestrian routes, but – despite previous Council commitments – there is no Planning Brief or Master Plan for the site, and thus no mechanism for the Council to achieve the mix of uses (including residential) and deliver the public benefits that an area of this size should provide to the community.
The site of this application needs to be considered in the context of an overall plan. Of all the vacant sites within the former brewery, Woodseer St provides one of the most suitable for new housing, perhaps affordable live-work units, instead of offices, and perhaps two-storey prefabricated structures to minimise costs and achieve low rents.
A Planning Brief could be prepared, consulted upon and adopted within a six month period and need not present an unreasonable delay to the development process.
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At Sandwich
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“There’s always something going on in Sandwich,” I was reliably informed by the guide who welcomed me to an old stone church, and the evidence was all around us in this ancient borough which has acquired so many layers of history over the last thousand years.
If you prefer your architecture irregular in form and mellow with age, this is your place – for Sandwich is one of England’s least-altered medieval towns. Yet the appeal lies not in how it has been preserved but in how it has changed, since every building has been melded over time to suit the evolving needs of its occupants, and the charismatic blend of timber with stonework and stonework with brickwork is sublime.
As I wandered through the quiet streets, I thought about the paradoxical nature of the guide’s comment since Sandwich unquestionably defines the notion of ‘sleepy town,’ even if that afternoon there was a concert in the grounds of the Lutyens house by the river and a fete at the quay. Yet in a more profound sense this has been a location of ceaseless activity since Roman times.
Contrary to popular opinion, ‘Sandwich’ means ‘a settlement built on the sand.’ First recorded in the seventh century, a thriving port and fishing industry grew up here on a sandbank in the days when the river was wider than it is today and the sea came right up to the town. A defensive wall with gates was built around this wealthy trading post and storm tides sometimes surrounded Sandwich, isolating it from the land. One of the pre-eminent ‘Cinque Ports,’ the fleet here offered nautical military service to the Crown in return for trading without taxation. Thus merchants from Venice brought their goods direct to Sandwich and even the King came to buy exotic luxury imports.
“You can easily get lost in Sandwich,” I was cautioned unexpectedly by the attendant at the Museum as I bought my copy of the Civic guide to study the history. It was an unlikely observation that the attendant uttered, since Sandwich is a tiny place, but let me confirm that you can quickly lose your sense of direction, strolling in the maze of small streets and lanes with names like Holy Ghost Alley, Three Kings Yard and Love Lane. An afternoon can fly away once you begin to study the glorious detail and rich idiosyncrasy of eight hundred years of vernacular architecture that is manifest to behold in Sandwich.
If your imagination is set on fire by winding streets of crooked old houses and ancient worn churches paved with medieval tiles and roofed with spectacular wooden vaults, then Sandwich is the destination for you. You really can lose yourself in it and there is always something going on.
St Peter’s Church
The King’s Lodging
Demon of 1592 on the corner of the Kings Arms
St Mary’s Church
St Mary’s Church
Tower of St Mary’s Church
Mermaid at the corner of Delf St
January 1601
The Delf stream was channelled to bring freshwater to Sandwich in the thirteenth century
Horse Pond Sluice
St Clement’s Church has an eleventh century Norman tower
In St Clement’s Church
Fisher Gate with the old Customs House on the right
Fourteenth century Fisher Gate
At Herne Bay
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Reculver Towers
Several years ago, I grew fascinated with a ruin upon the seashore in the background of a photograph of members of the Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys’ Club taken by Harry Tichener in 1938 . When Maxie Lea, who is featured in the picture, told me that it was taken at Herne Bay, I knew that one day I must go and seek this location for myself.
Yet, when I arrived and walked from the railway station to the deserted seafront, I discovered there were many other attractions that make this secluded corner of the Kent coast worthy of a visit. Set back fifty yards from the shingle beach, sits a magnificent line of grand hotels and seafront villas. Some are whimsical Victorian fripperies and others are elegant bow-fronted Georgian, and it makes an appealing backdrop to the well-kept and newly-renovated municipal gardens, basking in the September sunlight beneath an azure sky flecked with feathery trails.
A proud white stucco gatehouse guards a poignant remnant of what was Britain’s second longest pier in 1896, now just a stub attached to the shore with the far end marooned out at sea, unreachable and distant since the storm of 1978. You can take a stroll past the huts, adorned with saucy paintings in the style of Donald McGill, to reach the end of what remains and join a sparse line of fishermen and senior local residents, casting their eyes wistfully towards the horizon and awaiting a miraculous reconstruction.
Turning my gaze to the east, I could already recognise the towers at Reculver shining white in the far distance and encouraging me to take my leave of the town and seek the coastal path. The outskirts of Herne Bay present a curious mixture of dereliction and some cherished Regency villas, culminating in Marckari’s ice cream parlour where I had my first taste of an authentic Turkish delight ice cream. Thus fortified, I strolled onward upon the broad featureless concrete promenade with the towers reassuringly present, constantly in my vision.
Climbing a winding stairway takes you to the cliff path, lined with sloes and hawthorn, and giving way to meadows that descend towards Reculver. Soon, the towers are no longer an image on the horizon but looming above you. You ascend the path beneath them as a colony of swifts swoop and dive over your head, filling the air with their cries before returning to roosting places high in the turrets. You have arrived upon a raised platform of green, overlooking the sea, where the sweet fragrance of nectar hangs in the air. This was where the Romans built a fort in 42AD, when this was the end of the land and the marshes to the east were open water, known as the Wantsum, a channel that isolated the Isle Of Thanet from the mainland.
St Augustine brought Christianity to Kent at the end of the sixth century and, by AD 669, King Ecgbert gave this land for the foundation of a monastery. A tall church was built upon the Roman ruins, creating a landmark that signalled the spiritual significance of this favoured spot, visible from such a great distance. In 1810, the ruins of this church were reconstructed by Trinity House to create a stable structure that could function as a navigational aid. Once there was a thriving village of Reculver, yet the encroachment of the sea and regular flooding led to its decline until only a couple of houses are left today. Yet it retains a distinctive atmosphere and, after all this time, the imposing sea-battered towers are like natural excrescences of rock.
Setting out across the marshes as the afternoon sun declined, I was entranced by the naturally occurring gardens upon the shingle, where grey-green sea kale grew in star shapes complimenting the pink leaves of sorrel spreading close to the ground and interspersed with curious bushes of yellow poppies that seeded themselves all along the beech. Glancing over my shoulder, the towers of Reculver seemed to get no further away, watching over me now as they had beckoned me earlier.
Nine miles to the east of Herne Bay, I arrived at Birchington – a suburban resort with art deco villas, some dignified austere brick farmhouses and an unexpected half-timbered medieval cottage. My feet were sore and my face was burned from wind and sunshine, and I fell asleep upon the train – only waking again as we drew into London to wonder if the whole excursion had been a dream.
Herne Bay pier was once the second longest in Britain
Bow-fronted Georgian terrace on the seafront
Regency villas in a side street
The path to Reculver
At Reculver
Harry Tichner’s photograph of Maxie Lea (standing right) at Herne Bay in 1938
1685 Map of the lost village of Reculver
At Minnis Bay
Cottage at Birchington-on-Sea
