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 rebuilt in the 1920s, electricity was not installed at the station until well into the 1970s, and the buildings and platforms remained illuminated by gaslight until then. Since 2009 Southeastern have been operating a high speed train service between London St Pancras and Ashford International which runs on to Broadstairs cutting about 40 minutes from what was once a two-hour journey to other termini in London. In 1841, 44 mariners were recorded as resident in Broadstairs; nine of these being specified as fishermen, and of course the residual boat-building activity that remained after the Culmer White yard closed in 1824