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Nayland Rock Promenade Shelter, Kent

Photographs by Derick Fusco

 

T.S. Eliot spent three weeks in Margate in the autumn of 1921 at the Albermarle Hotel, Cliftonville, recuperating after a mental breakdown. In a letter to novelist Sydney Shiff, dated 4th November, he describes writing a rough draft of Part III of his famous poem The Wasteland "while sitting in a shelter on the front as I am out all day except when taking rest." Lines in the final version of the poem read: "On Margate Sands/ I can connect/ nothing with nothing/ The broken fingernails of dirty hands/ My people humble people who expect/ Nothing."

The shelter where Eliot worked on The Wasteland is the Nayland Rock Promenade Shelter. A campaign led by literary figures including Alan Bennett and Andrew Motion resulted in this Victorian/ Edwardian seaside shelter receiving protected status in late 2009. The Wasteland is about meaningful things in life being found in ordinary places. The poem has bored secretaries looking in mirrors, seeing a superficial shiny surface which nevertheless reflects a deeper picture. From a humble little shelter Eliot looked out at a big ocean.

Apart from the connection with T.S. Eliot. the shelter also commemorates Victorian seaside holidays. This trend for extended stays at coastal resorts had begun with eighteenth century ideas about health giving benefits of sea bathing. The healthy as well as the sick then started to take visits to seaside resorts. It might be wondered why healthy people would want to spend time in what amounted to hospitals. Historian of holidays J.A.R Pimlott has mused that "the borderland between health and sickness is narrow." Perfectly healthy people still go on holiday because they think in some vague way that "it will do me good." Eliot came to Margate in the old tradition of seeking a rest cure.

 

 

 

 

Directions: Nayland Rock Shelter is just off the A28 on Margate's sea front, a few minutes walk from the train station. Click here for an interactive map cented on the Nayland Rock Shelter.