Margate and the Highs and Lows of an English Seaside Town, Margate, England

TS Eliot wrote this while convalescing in Margate in Thanet on the coast of Kent. He had suffered a mental breakdown. Every day he would sit in the open timber structure that overlooks Margate Sands and Nayland Rock. It seems he was soothed and stimulated by the sea and this helped him to overcome writer’s block. This excerpt is from Part III of The Wasteland which many regard as the most important English poem of the twentieth century. The shelter is still there and is now a listed building.

Eliot is not the only person to have benefitted from a sojourn in the little seaside town. At the end of the eighteenth century the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital was created in Margate. It was the first hospital to pioneer the open-air treatment for tuberculosis. Initially the hospital was only open during the summer months when patients would sleep on the verandas (the wards were only used in bad weather) and bathe in the sea from a bathing machine. In 1858 an indoor bath was added and the hospital remained open throughout the year. In the early 1950s the hospital became redundant as tuberculosis was no longer a common disease. The hospital building has since been converted into flats ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).