Deal, Kent Totally Explained

Everything about Deal Kent totally explained

Deal is a town in Kent, England. It lies on the English Channel eight miles north-east of Dover. It is a small fishing community situated between Dover and Ramsgate. Closely associated with Deal are the villages of Kingsdown, Sholden and Walmer, the latter being where Julius Caesar first arrived in Britain (best guess by historians).
Deal was named as a 'limb port' of the Cinque Ports in 1278. Due to its position on the Downs, the town grew to become for a while the busiest port in England; today it enjoys the reputation of being a quiet seaside resort, its quaint streets and houses the only reminder of its fascinating history. The coast of France is approximately twenty-five miles from the town, and is visible on clear days.
Its finest building is the Tudor Deal Castle, commissioned by King Henry VIII and designed with an attractive rose floor plan.

History

Early history

Archaeological finds indicate that people either settled in or passed through the area during the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age eras. It is traditionally believed that the beach fronting what is now Deal and Walmer was the site of the initial Roman landings in 55 and 54 BC. The absence of definitive records and changes in the topography of the area has made it impossible to prove the true landing site, although it was very probably in this area. The villages of Deal and Mongeham were recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, which listed them as "Addelam" and "Mundingeham" respectively. Walmer and Sholden are not mentioned in the book, although the Domesday Monachorum (an ecclesiastical survey made at about the same time) has an entry for "Wealemere", which may be Walmer church. In Saxon times, Deal was held by the canons of St Martin. It then passed to Dover Priory on its founding in 1136, and later to Christ Church Canterbury.
By the 16th century, Deal's shingle beach had grown to produce a barrier between the sea and the low-lying marshland. The marshland was then able to be drained, and agricultural output increased. The growth of the beach also led to an increase in shipping in the area. The harbours at Sandwich and Dover were becoming blocked by shingle and were unable to be used by larger ships. During unfavourable weather, ships instead began to use the Downs, an area of sheltered sea between Deal and a sandbank east, known as the Goodwin Sands. This provided further employment for village inhabitants, who supplied the ships lying in the Downs with stores, fresh water and sometimes emergency equipment. Buildings began to appear on the newly created land by the sea, at first for businesses servicing ships, and later for residential purposes as well. After the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, the three manors of Deal, Deal Prebend, Court Ash and Chamberlain's Fee, passed to the King. Deal Prebend and Court Ash were granted to the Archbishop of Canterbury; Chamberlain's Fee was kept, and in 1599 passed into private ownership.

Maritime history

The proximity of Deal's shoreline to the notorious Goodwin Sands has made its coastal waters a source of both shelter and danger through the history of sea travel in British waters. The Downs, the water between the town and the sands, provides a naturally sheltered anchorage. This allowed the town to become a significant shipping and military port in past centuries despite the absence of a harbour, with transit of goods and people from ship to shore conducted using smaller tender craft. Deal was, for example, visited by Nelson and was the first English soil on which James Cook set foot in 1771 on returning from first voyage to Australia. The anchorage is still used today by international and regional shipping, though on a scale far smaller than at other times in the past (some historical accounts report hundreds of ships being visible from the beach).
   By the time Dickens came to Deal it had been largely forgotten how the government of 1784, under Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (who was staying at nearby Walmer Castle, and was later to be appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports in 1792), ensured that the Deal boats were all set ablaze, suspecting some of the Deal luggers of being engaged in smuggling. Pitt had awaited an opportunity that January, when the boats were all 'hoved up' on the beach on account of bad weather, to send a regiment of soldiers to smash and burn them. A naval cutter was positioned offshore to prevent any of the boatmen escaping.
   The boatmen's ancestors had the right, under charter, freely to import goods in return for their services as Cinque Port men in providing what had been long recognised as the sole naval defence of the realm. These men continued to risk their lives and their boats, in saving the lives of shipwreck victims.
   The irrepressible spirit of the Deal boatmen remained undaunted by these events throughout the Napoleonic Wars, and they continued to assert their hard-earned right to trade.
   From these activities news of the events unfolding in France would reach England quickly and regularly, with about 400 men making a living of off Deal beach at that time. The war only made the boatmen’s efforts more profitable, so that afterwards the Government immediately turned a part of its naval blockade into a coastal blockade, which lasted from 1818 to 1831.
   Deal had a naval shipyard which provided Deal with much of its trade. On the site of the yard there's now a building originally used as a semaphore tower, and later used as a coastguard house, then as a timeball tower, which it remains today, and as a museum. Besides this and the Deal Maritime Museum, there's no museum of the town's history yet, though a campaign to start one is ongoing - Deal's history is told at Dover Museum instead.

Royal Marines

The first home of the Royal Marines in Kent was established at Chatham in 1755. Because of its proximity to the continent and the fact that it possessed a thriving naval dockyard, Deal has been closely associated with the corps ever since its foundation. Records from the old Navy yard at Deal exist from 1658 and show that Marines from Chatham and Woolwich were on duty in Deal, and quartered in the town, until the Deal depot was established in 1861.
   Deal Barracks has become known over its long history as the Royal Marine School of Music, the barracks at Walmer consisting of the North, East and South (or Cavalry) barracks, and all were constructed shortly after the outbreak of the French revolution.
   Part of the South barracks was used from 1815 as the quarters for the 'blockade men', drafted against a threat of local smuggling. The South barracks became a coastguard station thereafter, and this duty continued until 1840.
   It was the East barracks which accommodated the School of Music, until the Royal Naval School of Music was formed at Plymouth in 1903, but which moved to Deal in 1930, replacing the original depot band formed in 1891. Thus the institution became known as the Royal Marine School of Music in 1950.
   During 1940, at St Margarets Bay, close to Deal, the Royal Marines Siege Regiment came into being and manned cross-channel guns for most of the remainder of the war.
   On the 22nd September, 1989, a bomb planted by the IRA killed eleven bandsmen and injured a further 22.
   On the evening of March 26, 1996, the Deal populace were privy to a special ceremony, the 'beating of the retreat', coming from the South barracks, as the Marines were commanded to vacate their ancient Kent depot and move to new quarters at Portsmouth. The Marines every year come up to the bandstand and put on a display which attracts well over 4000 people.

Lifeboats

Piers

The seafront at Deal has been adorned with three separate piers in the town's history. The first, built in 1838, was designed by Sir John Rennie. After its wooden structure was destroyed in an 1857 gale, it was replaced by an iron pier in 1864. A popular pleasure pier, it survived until the Second World War, when it was struck and severely damaged by a torpedoed Dutch ship, the Nora, in January 1940. This wasn't the first time the pier had been hit by shipping, with previous impacts in 1873 and 1884 necessitating extensive repairs.
   The present pier, designed by Sir W. Halcrow & Partners, was opened on the 19th November 1957 by Prince Phillip. Constructed predominantly from concrete-clad steel, it's 1026ft (311m) in length (the same length, as a notice announces, as the RMS Titanic!), and ends in a three-tiered pier-head, featuring a cafe, bar, lounge, and fishing decks. The lowest of the three tiers is underwater at all but the lowest part of the tidal range, and has become disused. The pier is a popular sport fishing venue.
   Deal's current pier is the last remaining fully-intact leisure pier in Kent. Its structure was extensively refurbished and repaired in 1997, with work including the replacement of much of the concrete cladding on the pier's main piles.
   Work began in April 2008 to construct a new pier-head with a modern restaurant. Work is expected to take about 20 weeks, meanwhile the pier remains open but with no toilet facilities or cafe(External Link

Museums

Deal has several museums, all are related to Deal's maritime history. Both Deal Castle and Walmer Castle are operated by English Heritage - Deal has a display on the events in the reign of Henry VIII that led to the invasion threat which caused its construction, along with some material on its subsequent history, whereas displays at Walmer concentrate on Walmer's post-Tudor role as the Lord Warden's residence. The Deal Maritime and Local History Museum(External Link

), as the name suggests, has exhibits of boats, smuggler galleys and model naval ships. It also contains extensive histories of the lifeboats as well as local parish registers. The Timeball Tower Museum, on the other hand, focuses on the importance of timekeeping for ships, and the role the building it occupies played.

Notable references

During the 19th century, Charles Dickens was to comment on the character of the East Kent boatmen, and on one of his visits to Deal (later used for an episode in Bleak House) he wrote:
Daniel Defoe wrote of the town:
Samuel Pepys recorded several visits to the town, being moved on 30 April 1660 (External Link

) to describe it as "pitiful".

In fiction

Dickens, who had visited the town (see Notable References to Deal), had Richard Carstone garrisoned here in chapter XLV of Bleak House, so that Woodcourt and Esther's paths can cross when Woodcourt's ship happens to anchor in the Downs at the same time as Esther and Ada are visiting Richard:
Jane Austen's Persuasion, chapter 8, the town is mentioned as the only place where Admiral Croft's wife Sophia Croft was ever ill, as it was the only place she was ever separated from him, whilst he was patrolling the North Sea:

A renamed Deal served as the setting for the William Horwood book, The Boy With No Shoes (ISBN 0-7553-1318-6). It is also the setting for part of his earlier novel The Stonor Eagles.
It is also the (renamed) setting of Frances Fyfield's crime novel Undercurrents (ISBN 0-7515-3028-X).
It is also the setting for David Donachie's book A Hanging Matter (ISBN 0-330-32862-X), a murder and nautical mystery.
North & South Deal were swapped round in the semi-autobiographical novel The Pier by Rayner Heppenstall.
Deal also features briefly in H. G. Wells The War of the Worlds.

Twin towns

- Saint-Omer, France

- Vlissingen, Netherlands

Notable residents

Comedian Norman Wisdom, writer Simon Raven and actors William Hartnell and Charles Hawtrey all lived in Deal. Notable people born in the town include James Arbuthnot, John Hulke, Elizabeth Carter, Clive Metcalfe and John Stanton Fleming Morrison.

Further Information

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