Nayland Rock promenade shelter

Reasons for Designation

The Nayland Rock promenade shelter is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * As a good, and particularly large, example of a late-Victorian/Edwardian seaside structure; * For its special literary association as the likely location where TS Eliot composed part of 'The Waste Land' in the autumn of 1921; * Group value with the adjacent Surf Boat Memorial and Buenos Ayres terrace to the rear.

Details

878/0/10079

MARGATE
MARINE TERRACE
Nayland Rock promenade shelter

09-OCT-09

II
Promenade shelter. Constructed c1900, restored 1998.

Rectangular plan with hipped roof covered in zinc (restored in 1998) supported on two rows of five slender cast-iron columns with moulded plinths and capitals. Columns support longitudinal cast-iron beams and elaborate transverse cast-iron fretwork brackets (double at the front and single at the rear of the structure) which in turn support a flat timber ceiling. The eaves have wooden fretwork awnings. Under the canopy the internal space is divided by an elongated H-plan white-painted glazed timber screen. This is raised from the chequered red and brown tile floor on a wooden, H-plan, triple-stepped dais faced with green tiles. This has cast-iron hand-rails. The glazed panels have flat arched tops and are divided by half-round wooden mouldings. The end panels have short returns for protection from the wind. Backing onto the screen are continuous wooden benches divided by heavy wooden arm rests and supports to form individual seats. Stone steps down to the promenade, replaced in 1998, again have cast-iron hand-rails.

HISTORY
The first shelter on this seafront location on the promenade overlooking Margate Sands was built at some point between 1872 and 1896. It does not appear on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1872, although a seat is marked at the location, but is clearly shown on the 1896 edition. In old photographs the shelter had an H-plan with hipped roofs supported on cast-iron columns and was raised on a platform with rounded ends. This building was replaced by the present structure probably in the early years of the C20 and appears on its new footprint on the 1907 OS map.

The shelter has been plausibly identified as the place where TS Eliot composed part of the seminal poem 'The Waste Land'. Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was born in St Louis, Missouri and partly raised in Massachusetts before attending Harvard to study literature. Following a postgraduate year in 1910 at the Sorbonne where he wrote the early poems including 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' that established his reputation as a poet, Eliot returned to Europe in 1914 on a Philosophy fellowship, ending up at Oxford. In June 1915 he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood (1888-1947) resulting in his remaining in England, eventually becoming a British citizen in 1927. Best known for his verse including 'The Waste Land' and 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' and drama, such as 'Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot established a reputation as the leading British literary figure in the immediate post-war years receiving the Nobel prize for Literature in 1948.

Eliot was in Margate for three weeks in October/November 1921, staying at the Albermarle Hotel in Cliftonville as part of a rest cure following a mental breakdown. In a letter to the novelist Sydney Schiff, dated 4 November 1921, Eliot writes 'I have done a rough draft of part III [of 'The Waste Land'], but do not know whether it will do, and must wait for Vivien's opinion as to whether it is printable. I have done this while sitting in a shelter on the front - as I am out all day except when taking rest. I have written only some fifty lines, and have read nothing, literally - I sketch the people, after a fashion, and practice scales on the mandoline'.

Margate is mentioned in Part III of 'The Waste Land', 'The Fire Sermon': 'On Margate Sands. / I can connect / Nothing with nothing. / The broken fingernails of dirty hands. / My people humble people who expect / Nothing.'

SOURCES
The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound by T. S. Eliot, annotated and edited by Valerie Eliot (Faber and Faber, 1971)

Seabrook, David - All the Devils are Here (2002)
Barker, Nigel; Brodie, Allan; Dermott, Nick; Jessop, Lucy and Winter, Gary - Margate's Seaside Heritage (English Heritage 2007)
Bush, Ronald - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for TS Eliot (2004)

REASON FOR DESIGNATION
The Nayland Rock promenade shelter is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* As a good, and particularly large, example of a late-Victorian/Edwardian seaside structure;
* For its special literary association as the likely location where TS Eliot composed part of 'The Waste Land' in the autumn of 1921;
* Group value with the adjacent Surf Boat Memorial and Buenos Ayres terrace to the rear (qv).

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

506991

Legacy System:

LBS

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