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Heritage
There is something very special about living on the coast, that
ever-changing strip of land that forms an interface between the world of man and the raw power
of nature. Along the Kent coast there are the white cliffs of Dover, magnificent castles, wartime
relics, eerie concrete sound mirrors, wide sandy beaches, sheltered bays and the largest shingle
expanse in Europe. Abundant reminders of every period of the country's history and examples of
most types of coastal terrain are to be found here. For those of a literary bent, the Kent coast
has inspired authors as diverse as HG Wells, Russell Thorndike, Ian Fleming and Charles Dickens.
Its most celebrated artist was Turner, whose sunsets never fail to move. Whitstable is a town
eternally entwined with the sea with its weather boarded cottages next to the beach, its maze of
smugglers' alleyways, its busy harbour and world famous oysters. The Beacon House itself has the
distinctive clapboard exterior and arts and crafts interior, the pilot's cabin and beach hut
neighbours. Stretching out to sea beneath it is The Street, a long finger of shingle and, in the
distance the the wind farm and the Maunsell Sea Forts, occupied gun emplacements erected in the
Thames Estuary in the second World War.
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