Qualla: Broadstairs

Broadstairs: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0. Charles Dickens called the Anglican parish church of Broadstairs "a hideous temple of flint, like a petrified haystack." He came back every summer anyway, from 1837 to 1859, and he wrote some of his most famous novels in the house above Viking Bay - including David Copperfield, finished in 1850 in a study with a window looking straight down onto the harbour. He named the town his "English Watering Place." Twenty-five thousand people live there now, on the chalk Isle of Thanet, in a town built around seven golden bays and a 16th-century gate that you still walk through to reach the sand.

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Image: Dicklyon | CC BY-SA 4.0

Broadstairs: How the steps got their name

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Le Deluge, CC BY-SA 3.0. There was a shrine on the cliff first - the Shrine of Our Lady at a place called Bradstow, meaning broad place, named for the wide bay below. By the 14th century, pilgrims and fishermen had cut a flight of steps into the chalk to get from the sand up to the shrine. The shrine is ...

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Image: Le Deluge | CC BY-SA 3.0

Broadstairs: Dickens at Bleak House

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MysteriousMistyCat, CC BY-SA 4.0. Dickens first came in 1837, the year Victoria became queen. He returned almost every summer for two decades, swimming off the sands, walking the cliff path to Kingsgate, working at a desk in the house then called Fort House on the East Cliff. It is now called Bleak House - althou...

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Image: MysteriousMistyCat | CC BY-SA 4.0

Broadstairs: Princess Victoria's beach holiday

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clint Mann, CC BY-SA 2.0. Half a century before Dickens, the future Queen Victoria spent her childhood summers here. Between 1826 and 1836 the young princess and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, stayed at Pierremont Hall - a 1785 house in present-day Pierremont Park, built by Samuel Pepys Cockerell. They ...

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Image: Clint Mann | CC BY-SA 2.0

Broadstairs: Seven bays

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dhollm / David Hollman, CC BY-SA 3.0. The coast runs in a curling chalk staircase north from Ramsgate: Dumpton Gap, Louisa Bay, Viking Bay, Stone Bay, Joss Bay, Kingsgate Bay, Botany Bay. North Foreland - the chalk headland with its lighthouse - rises between Stone and Joss. Botany Bay and Joss Bay got Blue Flag awar...

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Image: Dhollm / David Hollman | CC BY-SA 3.0

Broadstairs: Who Broadstairs made

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Acabashi, CC BY-SA 4.0. Bradstonians, the locals call themselves. The town is unusually full of writers and musicians for its size. Sir Edward Heath, prime minister from 1970 to 1974, was born here in 1916. John Buchan invented The Thirty-Nine Steps after recuperating from illness at a clifftop house ne...

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Image: Acabashi | CC BY-SA 4.0