Nayland Rock promenade shelter

Nayland Rock Promenade Shelter

This promenade shelter on Marine Terrace, Margate, was constructed around 1900 and underwent restoration in 1998.

The shelter is a rectangular structure with a hipped roof covered in zinc (restored in 1998). It is supported on two rows of five slender cast-iron columns with moulded plinths and capitals. These columns support longitudinal cast-iron beams and elaborate transverse cast-iron fretwork brackets—double at the front and single at the rear—which in turn support a flat timber ceiling. Wooden fretwork awnings run along the eaves. The internal space is divided by an elongated H-plan white-painted glazed timber screen with flat arched tops divided by half-round wooden mouldings. The end panels have short returns for wind protection. This screen is raised from a chequered red and brown tile floor on a wooden H-plan triple-stepped dais faced with green tiles, with cast-iron hand-rails. 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, have cast-iron hand-rails.

An earlier shelter occupied this seafront location between 1872 and 1896 (appearing on the 1896 Ordnance Survey map but not the 1872 edition). Photographs show it had an H-plan with hipped roofs supported on cast-iron columns and was raised on a platform with rounded ends. The present structure replaced it, probably in the early years of the 20th century, and appears on the 1907 OS map in its new footprint.

The shelter has been identified as the location where TS Eliot composed part of his seminal poem 'The Waste Land' in autumn 1921. Eliot was in Margate for three weeks in October and November 1921, staying at the Albermarle Hotel in Cliftonville during a rest cure following a mental breakdown. In a letter dated 4 November 1921 to novelist Sydney Schiff, Eliot wrote: "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 directly 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."