Herne Bay, Kent

Historical Description

Herne Bay, a watering-place in Kent, with a station on the L.C. & D.R., 63 miles from London, and a post, money order, and telegraph office. Population of the ecclesiastical parish, 3625. Heme Bay was till 1818 or later only a small hamlet, when it rose suddenly into notice as a watering-place. It was constituted a town by an Act of Parliament in 1833, but this Act was repealed in 1880-81, and it is now governed by a local board of twelve members. It enjoys fine air, with abundance of bathing appliances, and has several good inns, plenty of good lodging-houses, a parade, a pier, a town-hall (used also as a theatre), a clock-tower, assembly-rooms, billiard-rooms, libraries, reading-rooms, a flourishing working-men's club, a church, a Congregational chapel, and a Roman Catholic church. The parade extends along the coast for nearly a mile, and is a fine promenade about 50 feet wide. The pier is of iron, 416 feet in length, and was erected on the site of a former wooden pier and opened in 1873. The clock-tower adjoins the parade conspicuously fronting the sea, was built in 1837 at a cost of nearly £4000, and serves as a landmark to mariners. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Canterbury; gross value, £400 with residence, in the gift of the Simeon Trustees. The church was consecrated in 1841, having been built some years before for a dissenting chapel, is in the Pointed style, and was well restored and enlarged in 1878. The Congregational chapel is a neat edifice also in the Pointed style. Numerous fragments of Roman pottery have been found in the channel near the town, and are supposed to be vestiges of cargo wrecked during the Roman times in Britain.

Church Records

Findmypast have the following online for Herne Bay, Christ Church: baptisms 1841-1912, marriages 1841-1928, burials 1841-1866

Findmypast have the following online for Herne Bay, Mortimer Street Independent: burials 1828-1834

Findmypast have the following online for Herne Bay, St John: baptisms 1899-1912, marriages 1894-1928

Maps

Online maps of Herne Bay are available from a number of sites:

• Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• Google Streetview.
• National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
• OpenStreetMap.
• old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
• Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)

Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Kent newspapers online:

• Kent & Sussex Courier
• Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald
• Dover Express
• Kentish Gazette
• Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald
• Kentish Chronicle
• Maidstone Telegraph

Visitations Heraldic

The Visitation of Kent, 1619 is available on the Heraldry page, as is also The Visitation of Kent, 1663-68.