Broadstairs the 1930s by A.H. Simison (the photographic chemist) entitled "Ramsgate (The Kent Coast at its best) Pictorially Presented", describes Broadstairs town as having approached modernisation and urban development "always with a consistent policy of retaining those characteristics for which it has for so long been renowned". The town has retained many aspects of historical interest, besides its maritime history. Amongst these is its notable religious history, evoked by places such as the Shrine of Our Lady, Bradstowe. Lifeboats arrived in Broadstairs in 1851. News of the loss of the Irish packet with 250 lives, on the sands off Margate on
Broadstairs in 1774. By 1795, York Gate needed repair to repel any threat from the French Revolutionary Wars. The subsequent renovation was undertaken by Lord Hanniker in the same year as the first lightvessel was placed on the Goodwin Sands. On the occasion of the landing at Thanet of Major Henry Percy of the 14th Dragoon Guards, on 21 June 1815 with the captured French eagle standard taken at Waterloo, a tunnel stairway from the beach to the fields on the cliff tops above was excavated, and christened "Waterloo Stairs" to commemorate the event. Broadstairs was supposedly the first town in