Westgate-on-Sea

A few od the sketches made by Collingwood in 1896 in and around Westgate.

William bought land in fashionable Westgate around 1880, but the family didn’t live in the area until 1887-88 when they rented Quex Park in Birchington.  Quex was the home of Percy Powell-Cotton, explorer and big-game hunter, who was away on his travels when the Ingrams stayed there. Shortly after this, William built Loudwater House in Westgate, named after the village in Hertfordshire where his father had owned a paper mill and built a house. William soon bought and moved to The Bungalow, originally truly a bungalow but which he hugely enlarged.

Because of his health, Collingwood never went to school but had a succession of tutors at home – his brothers went to Winchester and Oxford. At Westgate his solitary walks around Westgate nurtured his love of birds in nature, not just those in aviaries and in the home. Quex remained one his favourite haunts, as these 1896 diary entries and sketches show.

23 January 1896
About half way across the marshes we saw a heron, he was sitting or rather standing with feet buried two or three inches in the muddy water. The sun shone full on him and he looked handsome indeed.

22 May 1896
It is too tantalising, in about a strip of fifty yards of ditch I am sure a pair of reed buntings have a nest. Already I have found a yellowhammer’s and a greenfinch’s.

Oh glory! It is found. On the 18^th I spent an hour and a half, today one hour. But with success, as long as I have found it, it is all right. I am not absolutely certain as yet for the nest contains young birds too young to verify, but I will return later.

The male and female have just fed them, so now I am sure.’ His note is, as near as I can get it, Tzeow, Tzeow, Tzeo, Tzeo, the last two notes in a higher pitch.

25 May 1896

Again went to Quex and found a nightingale’s nest, the first one I have found. It was in the “Boat Clump”, Quex Park, and contained four of the darkest eggs I have ever seen. It was about six inches from the ground and built of dead grass and a few yellow oak leaves, and lined with black hair.

Opposite, around Westgate, top to bottom, Heron, young Lapwing (left), Greater Black-backed Gull (right), Snow Buntings rising from a field, Nightingale’s nest