Littlestone-on-Sea is a small coastal village close to

New Romney New Romney is a market town in Kent, England, on the edge of Romney Marsh, an area of flat, rich agricultural land reclaimed from the sea after the harbour began to silt up. New Romney, one of the original Cinque Ports, was once a sea port, w ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England. It was established in the 1880s by Sir

Robert Perks Sir Robert William Perks, 1st Baronet (24 April 1849 – 30 November 1934) was a British Liberal politician. He was the son of George Thomas Perks (1819 – 1877), a Wesleyan Methodist preacher. He was educated at Kingswood School and at King ...

as a resort for the gentry, at the point of the local

lifeboat station A rescue lifeboat is a boat rescue craft which is used to attend a vessel in distress, or its survivors, to rescue crew and passengers. It can be hand pulled, sail powered or powered by an engine. Lifeboats may be rigid, inflatable or rigid-inf ...

. At low tide, a World War II Mulberry Harbour

Phoenix breakwater The Phoenix breakwaters were a set of reinforced concrete caissons built as part of the artificial Mulberry harbours that were assembled as part of the preparations for the Normandy landings during World War II. They were constructed by civil en ...

is visible along the coast; the caisson was unable to be refloated as part of the post D-Day harbour construction in

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

, so was abandoned. The nature of the Phoenix breakwaters meant they were constructed and sunk until needed (so as to be invisible to air attack); by design they would have had the water evacuated by Royal Engineers and then been towed to France where they would have become part of the harbour. There is a P.L.U.T.O. or Pipe Line Under The Ocean, station, formerly used to carry petrol across to France during the

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D ...

landings.

''The First Men in the Moon''

Littlestone is the location of Mr Bedford's landing in the sphere in H.G. Wells' book ''

The First Men in the Moon ''The First Men in the Moon'' is a scientific romance by the English author H. G. Wells, originally serialised in ''The Strand Magazine'' from December 1900 to August 1901 and published in hardcover in 1901, who called it one of his "fantastic ...

''. Mr Bedford leaves the sphere on the beach and enters a hotel. A local boy called Thomas Simmons (the name of an old school friend of Wells) who witnessed Mr Bedford's arrival later enters and takes off in the sphere and is never seen again.

Littlestone Golf Club

The textile entrepreneur Henry Tubbs established Littlestone Golf Club in 1888 on land bought with J Lewis. He built a house next to the course in 1889 to act as a Clubhouse until the current one was finished in 1910. This house, which seems to appear as St Andrew's Villa in the census of 1901, was known then and now as Netherstone. The minutes of the newly formed club committee note that Henry Tubbs as a committed

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

did not allow

alcohol Alcohol most commonly refers to: * Alcohol (chemistry), an organic compound in which a hydroxyl group is bound to a carbon atom * Alcohol (drug), an intoxicant found in alcoholic drinks Alcohol may also refer to: Chemicals * Ethanol, one of sev ...

in Netherstone. His nephew points out that this may be contributing to the slow growth in the popularity of the club. Alcohol was available in the 1930s, as narrated by John Bayley in a memoir of his family's holiday home near the golf club.John Bayley, ''Iris and her Friends'' (2000) chap. 2. Netherstone is still a home, being the only house to have a balcony facing the links rather than the sea. A similar pattern on a grander scale was seen in

Finchley Finchley () is a large district of north London, England, in the London Borough of Barnet. Finchley is on high ground, north of Charing Cross. Nearby districts include: Golders Green, Muswell Hill, Friern Barnet, Whetstone, Mill Hill and H ...

, north London, where Henry Tubbs built Nether Court in 1883. This was ultimately to become the clubhouse of Finchley Golf Club in 1929 after his death, and is still in use as such today.

References

Populated coastal places in Kent Seaside resorts in England {{Kent-geo-stub

''The First Men in the Moon''

Littlestone Golf Club

See also

References