Lost Dutch Gables in Kent
Archaeologia Cantiana (2015 vol. 136) carried a Survey of Dutch & Flemish Gabled Houses of Kent and a Gazetteer of all examples both surviving and lost can be found on the KAS website.
Those surviving can of course be visited by anyone wishing to, but images of those lost may be of interest and have been reproduced below. J. Weir in the 1880’s drew examples whose drawings have fortunately survived although not the buildings. A photo where the King Street example can just be made out also survives.
The Author recently had the fortune to be given a copy of a drawing of a Thanet farm lost through fire in the 1960’s, by local landowner David Steed who had recently acquired the painting (Fig. 2). This was at Manston Green in Thanet.
[fg]jpg|Fig 1: Top Left: The Ship, Ramsgate; Top right: House at St Lawrence; Bottom left: House at St Lawrence; Bottom right: House at King St., Ramsgate. All four buildings have been demolished. Drawings by J. Weir|Image[/fg]
[fg]jpg|Fig 2: Thanet farm lost through fire. Image reproduced by the author. Painting attribution unknown.|Image[/fg]
Photographs of lost examples are rare, but one of a bombed house in Canterbury, at 19, Watling Street survives, age unknown but probably Victorian (Fig. 3).
A favourite is the photograph of the three buildings once overlooking the former Sandwich Cattle Market, now a car park (Fig. 4).
[fg]jpg|Fig 3: 19 Watling Street, Canterbury.|Image[/fg]
[fg]jpg|Fig 4: The three Netherlandish gabled buildings that once overlooked Sandwich Cattle Market – courtesy of Sandwich Guildhall Collection. Photo by William Boyer circa 1880.|Image[/fg]
Another at Sandwich is the building that was next to the old Guildhall.
[fg]jpg|Fig 5: Sandwich Guildhall and lost gabled building. 1875|Image[/fg]
[pg13]The house nearest the camera was demolished in the 1950’s, the one behind it, Rozine Cottage, survives. A drawing of the demolished cottage appeared in the Archaeologia Cantiana of 1878. There are others, surviving and lost, in the Reading Street area of Broadstairs.
A postcard remembers the lost St Peters Court built c.1850 and demolished about 100 years later. A rare loss of a Victorian example of a building with a Dutch gable. The pronounced gable is on the right behind the circular tower. A cottage, with the same rendering as the main house, survives across the road in Sowell Street, off St Peters Park Road.
Gordon Taylor is a former Chairman of the Isle of Thanet Archaeological Society, a long serving member of the Kent Archaeological Society and an expert on Dutch and Flemish gables in Kent.
[fg]jpg|Fig 6: Rozine Cottage and lost gabled building.|Image[/fg]
[fg]jpg|Fig 7: St Peters Court, Thanet. Postcard courtesy of Barrie Wootton.|Image[/fg]