Bleak House, Broadstairs Bleak House, Broadstairs Bleak House (originally known as Fort House) is a prominent house on the cliff overlooking the North Foreland and Viking Bay in Broadstairs, Kent. It was built around 1801 and then substantially extended, doubling in size, in 1901. The house was the site of the North Cliff Battery and was used as a coastal station for observing maritime activity. The house is Grade II listed on the National Heritage List for England. Bleak House was originally called Fort House and was the residence of a captain of one of the two coastal forts guarding Broadstairs, the town
Broadstairs 6 April 1850, may have been the prompt that led old Thomas White to present one of his lifeboats to his home town of Broadstairs that summer. The lifeboat saw its first use on 6 March 1851, when the brig "Mary White" became trapped on the Goodwin Sands during a severe gale blowing from the north. A ballad was written to celebrate the occasion, "Song of the Mary White". Solomon Holbourn of Broadstairs, coxswain of the "Mary White", had an aunt, Sophia, who married William Stevenson at Folkestone in 1813. Their eldest son, also William, became a mariner and boatman