One of eccentricities of life in Broadstairs is the odd sighting of people swishing around in crinolines or top hats pretending to be Dickens characters. Dickens was here a lot on holiday but a more famous crinoline user was Queen Victoria who used to come here as a child and stay in Pierremont Hall between 1826 and 1836.
The hall has been the holiday home of several wealthy toffs, spent a few years as a school, and then a social club and in 1927 it was bought by the council.
In other towns you’d expect a major building like this to be the local museum or a community centre. In Pierremont Hall, upstairs is rented out to a variety of private companies, who get parking spaces outside. Parking in the Park!
The main hall is used for council meetings, weddings and public gatherings.
It was also once used as a polling station, with the worst ramp in Kent for wheelchair access.
After a lot of fuss making by the disabled community – including me – the hall is now accessible by a long ramp which gives wheelchairs and mobility scooters safe access to the building ground floor.
But the park that surrounds the hall has been an invaluable asset in our little town, still full of ancient trees, award winning flower displays, green spaces, a play park, and wonderful twisty paths that deceive your eye into thinking the place is much bigger than it looks.
The paths are friendly to wheel users like me (unlike most of King George VI park, in Ramsgate!) It’s the lungs of the town. And a wonderful venue for outdoor events like Folk Week, and summer theatre shows.
So why would anyone want to build in it? It’s had a collection of attempts to put buildings in the park.
“The Park Hut” was a kind of super shed, thrown up in the years after WW2 to be used for public meetings and was rented out as a nursery (kids not plants) for a while. Ugly building, decaying ungraciously. Supposed to be temporary….
A few years ago there was a proposal to replace the old hut with a fancy new community centre, proper brick and much more permanent. But big enough to need to destroy many mature trees and outrage the local community. Why in the park? we all asked. Why lose trees from our tiny park? It was seen as a vanity project by some of our local politicians…..
But at the same time, the Baptist Church was building an amazing community centre in the centre of the town, fully accessible, handy for buses and on the same footprint as the original building. No trees to be destroyed, no grass ruined with building works, no loss of open space.
Another church, the Star of the Sea at the opposite end of the High Street also built a church hall, picturesque in flint and surrounded by trees and gardens.
A big campaign by local people, a lot of fuss at town assembly meetings and lobbying of councillors saw the project disappear.
This was the first time a group called Friends of Pierremont Park was set up. It’s been revived now because – guess what? There are possibly more proposals to build in Pierremont Park! Houses this time – and probably not cheap homes for the homeless or sheltered peaceful park dwelling for the aged.
There’s a section just to the side of the park, called the depot, off one of the main paths, which in the past was used to grow plants, store gardening equipment etc. When I first moved to Broadstairs in 1992, I bought a lot plants there for my new garden.
It’s had a few uses since but has been empty for a while, coveted by the town’s gardeners who do such sterling work making Broadstairs flower.
This part is not counted as park space as there are some buildings on it, so in theory it’s not park, but the access road is. This means that any residents of houses would need the path turned into a road, destroying gardens and trees!
The council so far have refused planning permission and the depot is deserted, busy demonstrating how nature will overwhelm buildings and punch through tarmac left to its own devices.
The Friends of Pierremont Park held a meeting on the 14th July to discuss what could happen to the park. A representative spoke from the group that campaigned to improve Ellington Park in Ramsgate and transform it from what the local constabulary called a “Police Avoidance Area” (ie go in at your peril!).
The group managed to secure over £1.6 million from the national lottery to put in a cafe, toilets, bookshop and refurbish flower beds etc. It’s not a no-go area any more.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful in Broadstairs park? As a disabled person, I have visions of a fully accessible cafe/garden centre, toilets with full facilities for disabled people – there isn’t one in the town at all at the moment!
There could also be a greenhouse for the park gardeners, tool storage space, training centre to teach gardening skills, all surrounded by trees and powered with solar panels. Etc etc…
Isn’t that worth campaigning for?
Friends of Pierremont Park – Home https://share.google/tuWFDT3bOFJh50nLK
A very informative article. However I must take issue with the statement that the depot is not part of the Park.
In 1914 a London barrister by the name of William Copping sold a portion of the land to the Broadstairs and St Peters Urban District Council, with a covenant that stipulated that the land should be exclusively for “for the purpose of public walks and pleasure grounds under the provisions of the Public Health Acts”
By linking this to the Public Health Acts he created a Statutory Trust. The local authority hold the land in trust for the public.
Statutory Trusts can only be extinguished after consultation with the public. It follows that any such consultation should clearly explain to the Public regarding the existence of the Trust and how their views will shape any decision.
The plan accompanying the Indenture for this sale clearly shows that the depot was part of the land bought by the UDC and hence covered by the Statutory Trust; there has been no public consultation and so the Trust is still in force.
TDC have been trying to sell this land since the end of last year. Seemingly with no success. Maybe it’s time they gave up and returned the depot back to the people of Broadstairs and St Peter’s .
That’s really important information. Many thanks!
Say for arguments sake the land is sold and a developer builds on it. What can be done realistically even though we have the above information?
They would still require planning permission. Previous applications have been refused by TDC, and that was before the details of the Copping statutory trust came to light.