Shorncliffe Camp 1850's

Shorncliffe Camp - 1850's

Anyone living in an army garrison town today will understand the curiously ambivalent nature of the relationship between the local inhabitants and the soldiers. At times there are feelings of pride and admiration for the men, reinforced by marching bands and displays of skill and courage. Then there are the discordant notes of incidents of less acceptable behaviour, often fuelled by alcohol. This relationship has existed through the ages, and a browse through old local newspapers will reveal many examples of this Jekyll and Hyde attitude to the local troops. In what may be an exaggerated account that appeared in the Bombay Guardian in 1890, Sandgate seems to have been on the brink of total moral disintegration during the 1850's.

A TYPICAL ENGLISH GARRISON

One of the military stations in England to which troops from India go and come is Shorncliffe, a breezy upland on the coast of Kent. At its foot is the pretty little watering place of Sandgate . . .
The regular occupation of Shorncliffe Camp by the military changed the character of Sandgate. . . Troops returning from the Crimean war, and leaving for the scenes of the Indian Mutiny, were expected to indulge their animal, nay beastly, propensities to the full. Sandgate at that time reeked with the trap-doors to hell. Low beerhouses abounded on every hand.

After reporting that miscreants, mostly drunks, were regularly locked up in the old Sandgate Castle, the article delivered news of the renaissance:

Tweny five years have made great changes. The low beerhouses have been swept away, the number of liquor houses of every kind are reduced by fully one third. The 'Balaclava', the 'Sebastopol', and the 'Inkerman' are again peaceful cottage homes, while other dens of infamy have entirely disappeared, rows of modern shops and handsome Queen Anne houses have take their place and quite altered Sandgate.

Taken from Coast of Conflict by Michael & Martin George