Herne Bay was one of the earlier created seaside resorts, and rose from out the azure main--or rather, the somewhat mud-streaked sea that does duty for such--at the command of speculators, about 1830. It was actually created, for until that time there were but a few cottages by the shore, or anywhere in the neighbourhood, with a tiny green as the only cultivated ground. The first pier at Herne Bay was the Royal Pier, opened in 1831, the enterprise of a company which spent £50,000 on the building of it. This was a wooden structure, 3,000 feet long, and had a set of rails along its entire length. Carriages fitted with sails were made to run along the tramway when the wind served. At those times when it did not, I suppose one got out and shoved! Such were the simple pleasures of Herne Bay when William the Fourth was King. Passengers from the steamers landed at the pier-head. At the entrance were a number of stone balusters, part of the parapet of old London Bridge, demolished in 1832. They may still be noticed at the entrance to the present pier. But Herne Bay did not prosper. In vain was a parade installed in 1837, and with it a Clock Tower. The Clock Tower is still with us at Herne Bay; it forms indeed the one architectural, or decorative, feature of the place. True, it is not greatly decorative, unless we adopt the poet’s maxim in its favour, “the useful and the beautiful are one.” Of the utility of a Clock Tower, with a prominent clock in good working order, there can be, I take it, no doubt whatever; if only in that it prevents children numerously and continually asking testy old gentlemen what time it is. Railways ruined the original pier financially, and neglect and the teredo worm wrecked it materially. A second pier was built in 1873, and a third, the present, in 1878, considerably longer than the original and totalling a length of 3,920 feet. Electric cars run along it. The fortunes of Herne Bay have of late years recovered, and bid fair to continue so long as the site of it exists. There, however, is the problem. The sea is in a destructively encroaching humour, and thus the most elaborate defensive works have been necessary, to arrest the scour of the shingle. No fewer than ninety-one stout timber groynes project from the beach fronting the town, and do succeed in keeping the foreshore intact. Herne, the parent village of Herne Bay, is a quiet place, a good mile and a half from the shore. It was originally subject to Reculver, the mother-church of this district, to which the lesser churches paid dues. In the end, Herne grew important enough, and bold enough, to refuse tribute, and was threatened by Reculver in 1335 with excommunication; to no purpose. But the parish still pays five shillings a year for the repair of Reculver church, although that building is now nothing but a ruin, and its twin towers existent only as land and sea marks.