Westbrook is a Victorian

seaside resort A seaside resort is a town, village, or hotel that serves as a vacation resort and is located on a coast. Sometimes the concept includes an aspect of official accreditation based on the satisfaction of certain requirements, such as in the Germa ...

on the Thanet peninsula in the southeast corner of England. It is the westernmost part of

Margate Margate is a seaside town on the north coast of Kent in south-east England. The town is estimated to be 1.5 miles long, north-east of Canterbury and includes Cliftonville, Garlinge, Palm Bay and Westbrook. The town has been a significan ...

and is part of the

ribbon development Ribbon development refers to the building of houses along the routes of communications radiating from a human settlement. The resulting linear settlements are clearly visible on land use maps and aerial photographs, giving cities and the coun ...

of the north

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 ...

coast. Westgate-on-Sea lies to the west. Running through it is the main Canterbury Road where the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital stands, although the building is currently redeveloped into apartments. The row of shops opposite the hospital entrance includes Clarke and Crittenden. The Dog & Duck pub has been turned into offices for the Hospital Building site. Although a church still stands in the grounds, it is redundant and currently unused.

History

Westbrook's parish church is All Saints Church, a

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwa ...

church standing on All Saints Avenue. The church was built in 1894 out of ragstone by a local architect, T. Andrews. The building uses lancet windows and Geometrical Tracery. The nave is clerestoried, with Lean-to aisles and a lower

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. ...

The two-story southeast vestries were added in 1897 by E. S. Prior, and the southwest tower was added in 1909 by W. D. Caröe. The ground story of the tower is

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

dressed, while the top stage mixes Decorated and

Perpendicular In elementary geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at a right angle (90 degrees or π/2 radians). The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the '' perpendicular symbol'', ⟂. It c ...

Gothic styles. Architectural historian John Newman observes the interplay between the smooth and textured surfaces of the tower as being "typical" of Caröe. The tower ends in a recessed tiled pyramid roof. In the east of the chancel, there is stained glass of the Nativity, and in the west of the nave, a stained glass representation of

Te Deum The "Te Deum" (, ; from its incipit, , ) is a Latin Christian hymn traditionally ascribed to AD 387 authorship, but with antecedents that place it much earlier. It is central to the Ambrosian hymnal, which spread throughout the Latin Ch ...

, installed in 1910 by G. J. Hunt. Further glass was installed in the aisle windows from 1905 onwards, and signed by G. J. Hunt in the south as well as Percy Bacon in the north.

Demography

At the 2001 UK census, the Westbrook

electoral ward A ward is a local authority area, typically used for electoral purposes. In some countries, wards are usually named after neighbourhoods, thoroughfares, parishes, landmarks, geographical features and in some cases historical figures connected to ...

had a population of 4,319. The ethnicity was 97.8% white, 1% mixed race, 0.9% Asian, 0.3% black and 0% other. The place of birth of residents was 93.3% United Kingdom, 1.4% Republic of Ireland, 1.6% other Western European countries, and 3.7% elsewhere. Religion was recorded as 72.9% Christian, 0.2% Buddhist, 0.3% Hindu, 0% Sikh, 0.2% Jewish, and 0.3% Muslim. 12.9% were recorded as having no religion, 0.4% had an alternative religion and 12.8% did not state their religion. The economic activity of residents aged 16–74 was 37.4% in full-time employment, 11.9% in part-time employment, 11.1% self-employed, 3.5% unemployed, 2.5% students with jobs, 3.4% students without jobs, 14.1% retired, 6% looking after home or family, 6.8% permanently sick or disabled and 3.5% economically inactive for other reasons. The industry of employment of residents was 16% retail, 11% manufacturing, 7.4% construction, 8.8% real estate, 21.6% health and social work, 8.9% education, 5.8% transport and communications, 5.3% public administration, 4.9% hotels and restaurants, 2.9% finance, 1.1% agriculture and 6.3% other. Compared with national figures, the ward had a relatively high proportion of workers in health and social work, and a relatively low proportion in agriculture, finance, and real estate. Of the ward's residents aged 16–74, 16.7% had a

higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after compl ...

qualification or the equivalent, compared with 19.9% nationwide.

Notable people

* Richard Davis (1966–2003), English cricketer who was born in Westbrook

References

{{authority control Villages in Kent